Watergull Orchards Cox Apple Juice, England (£2.65, 75cl, Waitrose) The grapevine may be an increasingly common feature of the English and Welsh countryside, but I still think of this time of year as apple season. Unlike wine grapes, which you are just not going to find in your local greengrocer (they’re too expensive to grow and too valuable to winemakers for that), you can, of course, celebrate the apple harvest, and enjoy one of life’s simplest and cheapest pleasures, by biting into a perfectly ripe freshly picked Russet or Cox’s Orange Pippin. But the apple is also worth toasting for being the only fruit to rival the wine grape as a base for a range of complex drinks. Indeed, when it comes to drinking the juice before it’s been fermented, I reckon English apple varieties have the edge on any wine grapes. Most of the best I’ve tried have come direct from farmgate shops, although Cambridgeshire’s Watergull Orchards’ deliciously lipsmacking Cox’s juice is also available at Waitrose.
Guzman Riestra Sidra Natural Espumosa Brut Nature, Spain (£14.49, Cider Is Wine) If you prefer your English apple juice to be, in the American parlance, hard, a list of my favourite crafty producers in the heart of Ciderland in the West Country might include Somerset’s Pilton Cider, Herefordshire’s Little Pomona and Severn Cider in Gloucestershire. I’ve also enjoyed the champagne-alike sparkling cider of Gospel Green in Hampshire: the 2016 vintage of their Méthode Traditionelle Brut was elegantly fine-bubbled, liquid tarte tatin in its combination of appley and bakery-shop aromas (the 2018 vintage is £14.99 from realenglishdrinks.co.uk). It’s a style of cider that is increasingly popular and not just in the UK. In another classic apple-growing region, Asturias in northern Spain, Guzman Riestra makes a refined, dry very crisply delivered example, which, like the Gospel Green, clocks in at 8%, making it a nicelylow-alcohol celebratory alternative to classic 12%-ish bottle-fermented champagne or English sparkling wine.
Christian Drouin Bouché Brut Cidre de Normandie, France (£6.99, Roberts & Speight) Guzman Riestra are also dab hands at another style that has a wine-world equivalent, ice cider, which, like ice wine, is made from the juice of frozen apples. Their Sidra de Hielo (£19.99, 37.5cl, cideriswine.co.uk) is a kind of sweet essence of apples baked in brown sugar, and just about as happy a like-with-like match as you could find for fruity desserts or blue cheese. Ice cider, like ice wine, is also popular in Canada, specifically in Quebec, where the subzero late-autumn temperatures allow the apples to freeze naturally before they are picked. It makes for exceptionally concentrated, balanced bottlings, such as Leduc-Piedimonte Ice Cider 2011 (from £23.99, 37.5cl, novelwines.co.uk; whiskyexchange.com). Finally, no article on apple drinks would be complete without something from the heart of the French-speaking apple-producing world, Normandy, where distillery Christian Drouin makes both a wonderfully quaffable cider and exceptional Calvados such as the gorgeous, seasonally mellow Christian Drouin Hors d’Age Calvados (£89.95, thewhiskyexchange.com).
Follow David Williams on Twitter @Daveydaibach
