Tesco Finest Winter Cider

Well well well. My final cider for the year is... another supermarket cider. Also, it's another Westons... this time proudly stated on the bottle. My final plea this year goes to the supermarkets to do this for all bottles of 'own brand' cider. I think it would not be surprising if Thatchers and Aston Manor take up a good chunk... led of course by the new knowingly outdone Westons.

This is also a limited edition cider. I take it that this actually means that they are only running it through the Christmas period as opposed to it being a limited edition... pardon me for being slightly cynical at both Westons and Tesco - they aren't exactly known for saying things like they are (are they!) Anyway, it is a mulled cider... possibly following on the popularity of the very excellent Aspall version - and the sheer volume of smaller producers selling it at markets and festivals! Anyway, it is nice to find another one, so lets give this a go eh.

My first comments are about the instructions... it may be my own interpretation of a winter cider but this is NOT a mulled cider... there are no spices in it! The only difference between this and a normal Westons cider is that they have added molasses to it. OK, that is a slightly different kind of sugar than they normally use but... well... its a bit bloody lazy isn't it? Fair enough - my brain read 'mulled' when I saw the label, but lets be honest... its not a winter cider, it's just a cider. They even have the cheek to suggest that the drinker do the work by adding the spices!

A more serious point, and one worth bearing in mind is that, whilst it is OK to mull a cider at the point of sale (i.e. it is being adjusted for the punter at the time of drinking) none of the ingredients for mulling cider are included in the HMRC guidelines - so in fact a bottled mulled cider would attract about three times the duty of normal cider - ergo making it prohibitive to produce at a reasonable price. Saying that, I think Westons/Tesco never fail to skew something for their own ends eh. Cheeky buggers!

What is it like then? Having warmed it through (and refused to 'add my own spices') it smells, well, a lott like 1st Quality/Marcle Hill/The Guvnor. Oddly, it is slightly carbonated so fizzed a bit in the pan, but now it smells slightly bittersweet, sweet and quite juicy with a toasty/treacle aroma that must come from the molasses.

I should have tasted this cold, as the heating seems to make it rather watery.and cook out the more complex flavours. Don't get me wrong - it is pleasant, warming and sweet (I have been out in the wind and rain, so it is a welcome distraction). There is a bit of molasses coming through, but on the whole I am getting the sweetness of the cider and some tannins from the fruit. I think it would work well as a mulled cider, so perhaps my advice would be to buy the spices when you buy this... or, quite frankly, buy the spices and a bottle of the Henneys Vintage that is sat near to the Winter Cider and go with that. It is the same price and a damn good cider to start with. OK, lets be fair to Westons, the Westons Vintage would work well too.

There is a lingering aftertaste and it is mostly sweet with some apple too.

Let me be straight - this isn't such a bad cider. I think my sarcastic tone is probably because I feel it is advertised as something it isnt - or squarely fails to live up to. I have scored it as a cider as, well, that is what it is - and it scored 61/100... which is actually better than I had given it credit for.

I hope you are all having a fantastic festive period and, if you don't go in for that sort of thing I hope you are managing to avoid partaking (and still having a good time:-)

Tesco's Finest Oak Matured Still Cider

This one came as a bit of a surprise to me. Not particularly because of its greatness - although its not a bad cider - but because I failed to read the label and thought I was getting yet another sparkling cider. So I was a little taken aback when I poured it to find it flat and still. I even checked the cap to see if it had been loose before I looked at the label. Doh!

Well, this is a sparkling... I mean, still cider from Tesco's. A rare breed among supermarket ciders indeed. Produced for them by Westons to a 'traditional recipe'... it certainly has the look of a decent cider. And yes, I am bored having to bang on about 'real' vs. 'non real' cider. As someone once said (I think actually about Thatchers); "There is more that united us than separates us". Quite true.

There isn't much of a smell to this one, but after a few sips it doesn't really matter. I do like still ciders, and this one has a prertty gentle tannin and flavour - even smokey. You miss these things in a carbonated cider (I think) - the bubbles knock some of the more delicate profile of cider out of sight. Being still though, it tastes a good deal more sweet than its medium dry label. and this does mask any complex aftertaste.

Overall, I felt it lacked a character that would make it more special. Like so many of the more common brands I have tried so far, I think the pasteurisation and filtration have removed a lot of its charisma. This tends to leave a fairly save flavour. In fact (and probably because it is a still cider) I did note that I could taste a bit of a cooked apple flavour to it as well.

Never the less, its not a bad cider and once again the Tesco cider seems to have done better than its Sainsbury rival. Now if only they could get the rest of their cider range sorted out!!

A score of 66/100

Tesco's Finest Single Orchard Cider

Enough Sheppy's for now (don't they make a lot of different varieties!!!). Back to Tesco's and time to try one of their own. Well, when I say one of their own what I mean is the one that is made for them by Thatchers. Its hard to decide whether to tag this as Thatchers or Tesco... maybe it should be both.

The dead give away with the Tesco 'own brand' ciders (apart from the fact that they are honest enough to state who made it on the label), is that they use the producers bottles - hence this one comes in a bottle that is essentially a Thatchers type bottle. Another thing that is worth noting is that this cider came from a different Tesco; and the range is still pretty poor.

Never mind. Moving on to this cider, I expected it to be like another Thatchers cider - though the one it was most like was the Vintage which scored pretty well here. Its a golden cider with a moderate carbonation - so not over the top at all. It also has a nice cidery smell to it, which makes me want to take a great big gulp... but hey, I am trying to be sophisticated (had to look up that word:-).

There is a good full measure of tannin in this drink, with little acidity to haul it back. The sweetness does though, so it isn't at all mouth puckering. There is some good bittersweet flavour to this cider, although this doesn't really last very long (on the finish, I believe it is called). In fact, it does suffer a little from a lack of distinctive character about it - no one bittersweet rules or defines it - which is a shame as the vintage scored well on aftertaste. Maybe the comparison is a bad one then.

Overall, I found nothing to dislike about this cider, although I found nothing to rave about either (if I am going to be negative about it). Its worth trying, and with a score of 65/100, I reckon it won't disappoint too much,