Henney's Dry Cider

Henney's Dry is one of the finest commercially made ciders I've had. Generally, I compare ciders to my father-in-law's cider. He is the one who first really introduced me to cider and he is the inspiration for this blog. This one is darn close to his best. He makes a standard drinking cider from Trader Joe's apple juice that's pretty good but the one I compare other ciders to is the one he makes from apples he presses himself. Off the top of my head, I don't know what apples he uses, if it's a mix or a single variety, if it's a cider apple or a desert apple, but I do know that it has a perfect balance between dry and sweet, it's bubbles are quick and electric, the flavor is light on your tongue and it's a fine high golden-yellow. Henney's dry damn near matches all of these qualities.

In color, it has a beautifully light amber hew that holds the light like a candlewick aflame. In taste, it is enjoyably tart and ever so slightly sweet with a clean aftertaste that leaves a subtle and enjoyable whisper of a remnant of flavor in the recesses of the mouth. In mouth feel, it is spritely and effervescent, like a cascade of bottlerockets. It's clean. Even the bottle design has a simple elegance to it. Indeed, the simplicity of the label was one of the very first things that drew me to it.


In 1996, the hangover of the Iron Lady swaddled Britain's head while the country was in the midst of the utterly forgettable seven-year John Major era. While Major's vagabond leadership verged on ineptitude, his moderate tendencies enfeebling his policies, it was under his soft guiding hand that Mike Henney made his first batch of cider and decided it was good and necessary to the times at hand. There's no direct connection between the two of course, but in a butterfly flaps its wings sort of way, you might be able to argue that one doesn't happen without the other. So here's to more PM incompetence in England. May their leaders be rudderless and wracked with ambivalence, and their ciders be dry, lambent and refreshing.

Anyway, Mike Henney still runs the business in collaboration with Wyre Croft Farm at Bishops Frome who supply, mill and press the apples, and store the juice. Champagne yeast is added to the juice before being pumped into fermentation tanks where it is left until all of the sugar has fermented to alcohol, at which point, "the juice is separated from the spent yeast residue and held in tanks for at least four months to mature." Henney's doesn't back add juice to sweeten its cider which accounts for some of it's dryness and for the 6% alcohol.

I have yet to see Henney's this side of England though I don't doubt it is available at a few informed bottle shops, perhaps Bushwhacker Cider in Portland or someplace like that. Good luck hunting.

Rating: 

Learn more about Henney's Dry Cider at http://www.henneys.co.uk/index.html

Thatchers 2013 Vintage

I drank this bottle of cider while being thoroughly yet compassionately crushed at a game of chess by my uncle-in-law. I'd love to blame the beating on the cider having an alcohol content of 7.4% but that would be an injustice to the game and an outright lie. The loss was all mine but the cider helped ease the pain.

Made from a variety of the best apples of the harvest - Thatchers primarily uses the Katy apple, a flavorful, juicy and right acidity apple - this oak aged Somerset cider had a rich, lightly smokey flavor that filled my mouth. Matured in over 100-year-old oak vats, it had a strong alcoholic warmth on the back end, down the throat and in the stomach, though it was only slightly fizzy. Its clear amber-gold color was struck through with red overtones and it looked quite nice held up to candlelight or against a backdrop of quickly dwindling chess pieces. It wasn't as dry as I would have liked, though it did have decent tartness on the back end. A bit like biting into a crabapple soaked in bourbon. Overall, I liked it for what it was: an oak-aged, darker, deeper flavored higher-alcohol-content cider. I don't really drink cider to get drunk and I generally prefer it dry, light and airy but Thatchers 2013 Vintage didn't make any claims on those things. I'd drink it again, especially in winter.

This bottle was part of my first British purchase of cider and I chose it largely based on the appearance of historical longevity and classical appeal - I was happy to learn that it's still owned and operated by the original family line on a 380 acre farm in Somerset. It wasn't overly flashy and it didn't look like it was trying to convince me that I'd be cooler if I had it in my refrigerator or ordered one at a nightclub with swirling lights. Thatchers has been making  cider since 1904. With history like that, there's no need to try to keep pace with the times. Let them keep pace with you.

Denis Thatcher, a noted arch-conservative, house-husband to Margaret Thatcher, and golf and gin enthusiast had utterly no connection to the Thatchers cidery though he supposedly talked bitterly of the fact that the "workman's swill" bore his aristocratic and regal surname on its label. His ego was such that he couldn't stand even the possibility of someone confusing his bloodline for that of a lowly and flea-bitten laborer's. None-the-less, the rich-in-flavor cider continues to please people's palate after more than 100 years of pressing some of the finest apples in the English countryside. Denis Thatcher be damned!

Rating: 

Learn more about Thatchers 2013 Vintage at http://www.thatcherscider.co.uk/

Addlestones Cloudy Premium Cider

Recently, I had the good fortune to travel to England with my family and while I did not go on a cider bender while there, I did get to enjoy quite a lot of local apple hooch, and a broad range of it too. It was mostly good if not frequently outstanding. They do seem to have a pretty solid handle on what they're doing, perhaps because they have around 1,000 years of experience to draw on and a great deal more cider apple orchards to collect from than we do Stateside. However, of the little more than half a dozen different ciders I tried, none was so good that it demanded I keister a bottle to smuggle home. I did manage to finish every bottle I opened though, so that's something.

Anyway, on my first day, fresh off of a nine hour flight during which my two-year-old son slept a grand total of ten minutes, I first went to Sainsbury's and bought a bottle of Thatcher's and a bottle of Frome Valley, then I went to a pub in the Soho neighborhood of London and ordered a pint of Addlestones Cloudy Premium Cider. I didn't purchase any of these with any prior knowledge but rather worked off of appearances. Judging ciders by their labels, surely not much different than buying a dog off the internet or trying a new dentist, is not scientific but rather more like taking the advice of a palmist.

As you can see in the picture, the Addlestones cider, made from bittersweet cider apples grown in Somerset, was cloudy indeed. A bit like a foggy night sky in the city when the light from the streetlamps gets all caught in the moisture in the air and turns it warmly and densely golden. The turbid coloring results from the fermentation process during which the cider is double-fermented and never filtered, leaving behind yeast and apple particulates that make it cloudy and genuinely "live" meaning that the cider is constantly evolving, developing and shifting. My pint was long, limply effervescent, sweet and slightly tart, and left a residual flavor in the bottom corners of my mouth, though I might have been a bit dehydrated and that could account for the lingering taste, the sugars making my already dry mouth sticky in addition. The cloudiness surely added to the thickness of the flavor though it did not increase the dryness. I think I would've enjoyed it more had it been cold out. Fuller, richer, longer flavors seem to go better with the fall rather than summer.

Addlestones, on draught since 1986, is a Magners GB label which is itself a C & C Group label, a company that also owns Bulmers and the American brands, Woodchuck and Hornsby's. Which is to say, it is not small batch, local craft cidery though ciders have been pressed at the Shepton Mallet cider mill in England's West Country, the mill where Addlestones is pressed, since 1770. Rumor has it that King George III would get blisteringly drunk on cider there while visiting the West Country on holiday and may have retreated there to soothe his wounds after losing what the British call, the American War of Independence. He may even have hatched the schemes that brought down Napoleon whilst sozzled on some Shepton Mallet pressed cider. This is of course simply rumor without even a shred of evidence to support it so take it or leave it. Regardless, Addlestones Cloudy was worth the cost of the pint (3 pounds 50 for mine) though not the cost of the flight over the Atlantic.

Rating: 

Learn more about Addlestones Cloudy Premium Cider at http://www.addlestones.co.uk/

Reverend Nat's Hard Cider Revelation Newtown Pippin

I love an early morning walk when the sun distills the crystalline sky, a slight nip in the air almost stings your lungs, frost crisply alights on the grass. A good fall morning. It germinates the seeds of life and tautens the sails of felicity. Pulls the hues into clear view. I know this is kind of a peculiar start to a cider review but it's the most obvious metaphor I could think of to explain how I like cider to taste. Maybe a more straight-forward description would be to say that I like ciders best when the are cold, dryly tart, light and effervescent.

Reverend Nat's Revelation Newtown Cider is like a late spring morning, to extend my metaphor a little bit longer. It's still quite refreshing and still grows that electric touch of life inside you but the air is warm enough to move through and the nip isn't fully present. It doesn't quite have that same bracingly invigorating vitality. All of this is to say that it is rather tasty, restorative and has a certain amount of vim to it but that it is not quite crisp or lissome enough. There's a fullness, a richness to it that lingers in your mouth a little longer than I would like. The bubbles pinch your lips and there's a nice high country dryness but the bubbles don't tickle your tongue and the aridity doesn't quite outlast the volume and depth of the apples. It's a little to full-figured for my liking, the flavor staying a little thick in your mouth. None of this is to say that I don't like Rev Nat's. I like it a great deal in fact, actually, more than any other commercially marketed cider I have had yet.

It's very enjoyable, especially if on tap. It is a very little bit on the pricey side - this 500 ML bottle cost me $6.50 and it was on sale - but it is what might be called a "true cider" being made from pippins, one of the original cider apples that arrived along with those notorious cider-swilling pilgrims aboard the Mayflower. To be fair, their water was just crammed full with heated up and angry pestilential bacteria so cider was the safer choice when reaching for refreshment. Currently most ciders are made with standard snacking apples instead of those traditional cider apples the pilgrims mashed and fermented to wet their whistles on. Not many farmers grow cider apples in the U.S. these days. In fact, if you're looking for a lucrative farming option, pippins might be your ticket to wealth providing the cider fad continues to wax as I suspect it will, especially given it's gluten-free status and the current gluten-free frenzy. Anyway, what I'm getting at is, ciders made purely from pippins are somewhat rare so naturally they're going to cost more, and while you can now drink the water from your tap without worrying about bacteria - chlorine and fluoride aside - why should you when there's plenty of perfectly good ciders out there, like Reverend Nat's. 

Rating: 

To learn more about Reverend Nat's Hard Cider go to http://reverendnatshardcider.com/