Special Reserve English Keeved Cider

Orange in colour, moderate fizz and pretty cloudy. Leather and farmyard aroma. Flavour of wood with plenty of funk and tannins. Tangy and rich but too gassy.

750ml corked bottle. Sparkling, orangey amber gold colour, short-lived fizzy white foam head and mucky, apple aroma. Taste is tangy apple, fruity, with lots of leathery barnyard funk and drying tannins. Medium bodied, spritzy carbonation, very dry tannic finish. Nicely drinkable.

Light amber in colour, with an aroma of sawdust and dried apricot. Light, fresh, fruit flavour is displaced by a woody, tannic aftertaste, carrying moderate funk. Nice flavour, with soft tannins and wood, but much too gassy for my taste.

Bottle pour at Cider Summit Seattle 2015. A keeved bottle conditioned cider made from cider apple varieties. Semi-sweet. Slightly hazy, moderate tartness, and high tannins. This was my first time trying their cider, although since then I've had a bottle of their “Premium Vintage” at home, which I liked better. This one was a solid selection, but nothing too remarkable. Maybe as it wasn’t all that cold and had lost some fizz, which is a drawback of bottle pours from events like this.

Barnyard nose masks the fruit unless you pour with vigor, swirly in a big glass, then the fruit comes through. Amber pour, diminishing head, with great fruit and good balance of tartness, sweetness, astringency and sourness from the wild yeast ferment. Tastes like England.