British Cider Vs French Cidre

[Robin]

Hi,

Apologies in advance if this has been written about somewhere else on the forum, I tried searching for a thread but could not find one that covered it. At the risk of opening a can of worms, I would like to know people’s opinions about what makes a cider British in style.

People say you cannot make a real West Country or Herefordshire cider without the bittersweet apples from those areas. Strictly speaking: yes, obviously. But what I would like to address here is specifically the look, the tasting notes and the aromas of the drink, not its geographic origins.

I am currently in Normandy studying cidermaking, and here we have apples that are very similar in tannin and acidity content to the Southwest of England. In fact, some producers are now planting English cider apple varieties because they believe the trees to be less alternating. I may be wrong, but I predict the cider they will create from those apples will remain very much  ‘un cidre de Normandie’ and not ‘a cider’ in essence.

At first, I thought it might be the blending proportions of acidic and bitter apples, but that does not seem to be the case. You get various proportion of acidic and bitter blends in France as you do in the UK depending on the region, and you get monovarietals in both countries too.

Then I thought about keeving and ‘le chapeau brun’, but some UK producers also keeve their must.

Could it be something to do with when the cider is bottled and the maturing process? In Normandy, non-industrial cideries have begun to bottle their 2020’s cider now in January, to allow for the ancestral method of in-bottle conditioning often without the addition of sugar. Their cider will mature in the bottles from a few months to, in some cases, a couple of years, and the lack of nitrogen will allow for the cider to stop fermenting on its own in the bottle.

Whereas in the UK – if I am not mistaken – isn’t the most common practice to ferment the cider to dry, allow it to mature as dry cider for a while, until, infamously, the cuckoo’s first song of Spring. Then, if they want a sweet or medium cider, they back sweeten with pasteurised or frozen apple juice, cane sugar or the dreaded unfermentable sweeteners, and then (if they have not used the sweeteners) they have to stop the bottles from exploding by either very fine filtering prior to bottling and carbonating Or by pasteurising the bottles after a short period of in-bottle conditioning ?

Is there anything else which might demarcate British cider?

So, the question hidden in my original question would be: how to make an English-style cider from French apples? I know Cider comes in all shapes and sizes in the UK, so let’s arbitrarily take a Southwest-England style cider, not including industrial cider makers who use a high proportion of concentrate, but not necessarily Tom Oliver’s high-end, dry and still fine cider either. So, something like Worley’s or Bushel & Peck, that you would buy by the pint in a local pub or on a UK-based craft cider website, without paying £10 for said pint.

Any thoughts on the subject? Thanks.

[Claude Jolicoeur]

Yes, this is a very difficult question!

I wrote somewhere that if for example you are in North America (but the same would apply if you are in UK), grew French cider varieties, blended them in approximately the same proportions (of sharp-bittersweet-bitter) as the French do, make a keeve and bottle with the Ancestral method, you would be able to approach the style, but probably an experienced taster would say it is not quite it.

What would be missing is the terroir influence. That includes soil, climate, indigenous microorganism flora, traditional cultural practices, and what else???

[Robin]

The terroir and all it entails. A good addition to the list, although an inconvenient truth in our endeavours to reproduce British-style cider outside the UK.

[Andrew Lea]

I think you have answered your own question. It’s mostly about process, much less about the actual fruit.  The English process is totally different to the French.  There is a work of flavour difference between a wild arrested fermentation with its own residual sugar and one that is fermented to dryness and back sweetened. 

If you follow the “English” methodology in France I have no doubt you will produce an “English” cider, should you wish to. Conversely it is possible to produce a keeved French style cider in England, as Tom Oliver and Martin Berkeley have shown.  There are some differences in “terroir” as Claude says, and there are some differences in the target tannin / sugar / acid ratios. So, to my perception, Pilton keeved cider is less sweet and more acid than a typical French cider would be. But that’s the cidermaker’s choice. Other aspects of the flavour are process driven, in my view. 

Andrew

Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
www.cider.org.uk

On 23 Jan 2021, at 11:26, Robin <rxha...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Robin]

Andrew…

Thanks for reading and for taking the time to answer with some helpful knowhow.

I look forward to trialling the British process and seeing what comes of it.

When the socio-political climate cools down a bit, I recommend you taste Antoine Marois’s ‘Casus Belli’, Sicera’s ’Les Jardins de La Reine’, and Dupont’s ‘Cuvée Colette’ for some examples of dryer and sharper ciders.

Thanks again.