Tutts Clump Traditional Farmhouse Cider

I picked this up on a recent trip to Berkshire and have been meaning to try it for a few weeks now. Its made by small craft cidermaker, Tutts Clump - who are based in Berkshire. I will be expecting it to be a full juice cider with interesting character and not necessarily crystal clear.

On the side of the bottle, it says its made from desert and cooking apples. To me, this means that there will be very little (if any) tannin but a good sharpness to it that is typical of an eastern style of cider. With it also being full juice, it should be rather more sharp than its more tamed counterparts from larger producers.

And when its poured out, it looks exactly as I had hoped - yellow in colour, no carbonation and a light and crisp aroma. Its also a hazy cider - so no filtering here either. I do get a faint whiff of sulphites but these are far in the background and I would be surprised if Tutts Clump didn't use sulphites to keep things in check and fresh.

Its labelled as a medium dry, but I guess with the lack of tannins it does feel a lot sweeter than that (although 'medium dry' or 'medium' can mean very different things to different people). There isn't much tannin at all to this cider. It is fresh and crisp with an almost lemony flavour. The shame is that in order to compete with the sharpness there is a full mouthfull of sweetness that detracts a touch - even going through into the aftertaste (where you would expect the acid to bite through).

On the whole though, it is a good cider that demonstrates that small producers can do better than their larger counterparts with a lot less fuss and dance. Sure, I would rather that the sweetness was toned down a bit - well a lot actually - but its not trying to be anything its not - its a nice, full on eastern cider - nothing added.

It scored 72/100, which is a bronze apple. I have another one from this producer to try which is a dry...