Duchy Originals Herefordshire Vintage Cider

A Duchy Originals from Waitrose this one. OK, not quite. Its a cider produced for them, this time by a "family owned Herefordshire Cider Maker, established in 1880". Not much research required there then. Its on their home page. Its even in one of their bottles:-)

So, in the spirit of my review yesterday of the M&S cider, I have now gone back through the reviews and marked up the Weston's made ciders - which includes Sainsbury's (again). Well, before anyone starts to moan about how they didn't make it themselves just ask yourself this: would you want them to make it? No, me neither.

A big feature of Duchy products is their organic status. Yet another thing I could become a G.O.M. about (Grumpy Old Man for the uninitiated). It has all the labels and logo's you could want, but I can't help thinking "is this Weston's Organic relabelled?" Sorry, Weston's Organic isn't anymore is it... Weston's Wilde Wood (not sure if the e is actually correct, but it ought to be eh:-)

Now, this is a nice golden coloured cider, with a pleasant aroma. Forgetting about the organic bit (it really is much the same thing, honest!) the first thing one has to do is admire how positively clear this cider is! I have seen the numerous sheet filters at Westons and wondered why they use so many. This cider just about glows with it's brightness! Its also fairly well carbonated too - another fairly standard feature of most Westons.

Its a good cider though. OK, perhaps a tiny bit on the watery side compared to some I have tried recently. But the flavour is there and it is satisfying. Its well balanced too - mild tannin (pretty mild but not invisible) offsets the reasonably prominent acid and creates a good taste. A little engineered, but good. The aftertaste is good too, and pretty long as well.

Organic Vintage doesn't declare what is it, but I would say its a medium dry, and being a touch 'juicy' I would also say its seen some apple juice and pasteurisation.

All in all, not a bad cider. It scores 65/100 which, although its not an apple, is not a bad score either.  If you are interested, Westons Organic (as it was then) scored 60; so the two are pretty comparable. Maybe this one just caught me in a better mood (which just shows how subjective reviews really are!)