Cider Review and Sundry

Umm....hi. *shuffle* Do you, ah, radio silence much? Oh! Good. Me too.

Hard Cider Review Series - Introduction and Week # 1

I had big plans for this blog (remember this?), but it turns out that moving for a month straight, plus every deadline at work converging on the same date, plus a (new! awesome!) huge apartment that surprisingly takes much longer to clean than the one that was 1/3 the size....it turns out that all that is a perfect recipe for blogland radio silence.

Luckily for y'all (Sorry...I went a little bit country for a while there): 

Right behind me is a North Carolina wild water bear. Was terrifying. 

...so luckily for you all, I have a couple blog-worthy ideas and projects in the works. The first (and most self-serving) is a new (hopefully weekly?) series of hard cider reviews, culminating (hopefully) in a batch of (hopefully) delicious homemade hard cider. (You can read a great series of beer reviews from the guy who suggested this here). See, two things I adore about the northeast are a real autumn and the prevalence of hard cider. I also adore cider.

Buh. This happens *every year* and no one talks about it. Lordy.

I'll try to review a cider every week or two throughout the autumn, and maybe at the end of it all, I'll have accumulated all the stuff I need to make some cider at home. Maybe there'll even be a tutorial.

With no further ado, here's week one's review: 

This is Samuel Smith's Organic Cider, which claims to be made from organically grown apples. I tend not to be too concerned about organic produce or food, but it's nice for some folks to have that option. 

According to the bottle, it comes from the UK (although there is an "agent" name on there with a Washington ZIP code), and is 5.0% ABV. I found it singleton, one-pint bottles in my local supermarket in Boston(ish), so it looks like they've got a pretty widespread distribution.

The label is a slightly-kitschy, old-timey illustration of some apples and a few apple blossoms. It honestly looks like a plate that my grandmother would have hung on the wall. Not a fan, to be honest, but it's different, and it did get me to buy the thing.

Mr. Smith describes the cider as "a medium dry cider with brilliant straw color, light body, clean apple flavour and a gentle apple blossom finish" and suggests pairings like pork dishes, cream soups, or a salad with vinaigrette dressing (er...bit of a non-sequitur with the salad? You decide. I went with risotto, myself.). 

I chilled the cider in my fridge for a while (read: weeks) before I had the chance to drink it, so it was nice and cold when I finally pulled it out. The color is pretty spot-on straw colored, and a bit more orangey than some of the other ciders I've had. It hasn't got much of a smell to it - mostly sweet, with the tiniest hint of apple. 

On tasting it, my first impression was that it tastes more intensely of apples than a lot of other brands. You know how big apples tend to be kind of bland, but smaller ones are sweeter and more flavorful? That's the difference here. It's got a nice quick hit of apple at the beginning, then backs off in to a sweet, clean flavor. I think that "medium dry" might be the wrong term here - it's very sweet to my palate. They do add sugar to their cider, according to the ingredients list. The bottle claims it has an "apple blossom finish" but damned if I can taste it. I get almost no aftertaste here.

The carbonation is on the lower side, which is sort of unfortunate, because more than anything, the taste reminds me of straight-up apple juice. It's a good flavor, very apple-y, but if I'm going to drink a hard cider, I want it to differentiate itself from Welch's as much as possible. I think more carbonation would help that. 

So to sum up: a pleasing cider with a pretty good alcohol content and strong apple flavor, but could back off on the sugar a bit and be more daring with the taste. An organic option for those who care about such things.

Oh...I have to have a rating system? Ah. I guess...how about...four Galas and a couple of Fujis? Is that good? Yes? Yes.

So what are you going to be drinking for the fall season?