Eddisbury Fruit Farm Cheshire Cider (GBBF)

Now to move towards some counties I haven't tried before now. That is the wonderful thing about the cider bar at GBBF, its a snapshot of the UK cider makers (although clearly not every one is represented as that would be a very large cider bar!). Cheshire is the next stop... situated reasonably close to Herefordshire and Gloucestershire (note I say 'reasonably'!)

The only down side to my opting to 'travel the UK by cider' is that it means abandoning the 'dry' ciders and heading for something more 'medium' (well, heading for whatever in order to try ciders from around the country). This cider from Eddisbury Fruit Farm was the choice from Cheshire. Producing cider for the last 10-15 years mainly from dessert and culinary fruit, my hope is that they have perfected this style of cider and that it is light and refreshing (there is quite a lot of eastern cider here this year, and not all are 'perfected')

It turns out to be yellow and smelling acidic. To be honest, its kind of what I expected. Its not filtered and is hazy too - definitely another eastern style of cider.

The taste of this cider is tangy, fruity and has a rather sour acid note to it. Bramley again??!! I will have to do some research, but I don't think there are many other varieties that offer a sour acid to a cider - as a cider maker I would never ever put more than 10% in as a total... and that is only if I couldn't get hold of anything better. This is a shame, as the cider is actually quite nice apart from that.

It's not the most pronounced acid I have tried today, although the sourness runs through the taste and into the aftertaste too - sadly. Other than this, the tangy fruit is interesting and it has a rather good body for an eastern cider. This suggests that there are some better apples available to them which provide a more interesting profile.

That is really all I have to say about this cider. In my note book, underlined, it simply says 'another cooking cider - nothing new to say'. I guess that sums it up... a score of 64/100 represents the good things about this cider.

There is nothing wrong with producing a sharp cider. In many ways, producing a good sharp cider is more tricky than producing a good tannic cider... its too easy to end up with something thin, acidic with little character or flavour. The sourness in this cider doesn't help.