Day 360 Drink: Magners Original Irish Cider

Magners has been making cider in Ireland since 1935. The company uses a blend of 17 apple varieties to create Magners Original. The company suggests serving its cider over ice.

Magners Original Irish Cider pours a light brass color with minimal amounts of bubles. The 4.5 percent alcohol by volume cider has an apple peel aroma. The flavor is crisp and light. Reminds me a bit of a sauvignon blanc.

Day 115 Drink: Woodchuck Pear Cider

Green Mountain Cidery got its start in 1990 as the Joseph Cerniglia Winery in Vermont, which made wines from apples. The company markets the Woodchuck, Strongbow, Cider Jack and Woodpecker Cider in the U.S.

Woodchuck Pear Cider is nearly as clear as water, with a nice effervescence. The aroma is clearly pear. The flavor opens with a direct pear note, slightly perfumed and sweet. The is a crisp edge to the finish. Pleasantly refreshing.

Day 11 Drink: Crispin Honey Crisp Artisanal Reserve

Crispin Cider is a relatively new brand founded by Joe Heron, the man behind Nutrisoda, which he created and then sold to PepsiAmericas. There are four varieties of Crispin on the market, all using west coast apples. The makers recommend pouring them over ice, which is a departure for most traditional ciders.

Crispin Honey Crisp Artisanal Reserve is made with organic honey. It pours a cloudy straw color, with a slight effervescence and a fresh apple nose. The texture is smooth with a moderate sweet palate. Refreshing and fairly clean. Goes well with roasted chicken or as a cocktail pour.

Day 1 Drink: Aspall Cuvee Chevallier Double Fermented Cyder

Tired of Champagne already in 2010? You might want to give Aspall Cuvee Chevallier Double Fermented Cyder a try.

Produced by Aspall Cyder House of Suffolk, England, which dates back to 1728, and imported by SBS Imports of Seattle, Washington, Aspall Cuvee Chevallier is a sparkling cider produced from apples higher in acid and lower in sugar content, so it has many of the tart characteristics of classic Champage. There is a slight musty apple note to the nose and the cider has a straw yellow color. Nice crisp finish that will go well with many meals.

Aspall Cuvee Chevallier is sold in cork-finished 750 milliliter champagne-style bottled, so you may be tempted to try to fool your friends. The 11 percent alcohol by volume cider sells for around $16 a bottle.

Tuesday Tasting: Seven Ciders

Tuesday Tasting is a regular feature of Lyke2Drink that explores some of the best beers, wines and spirits on the market. This week we try seven different ciders.

Cider is a drink that has sustained farmers and rural residents for centuries. Relatively easy to make, it was also inexpensive -- traditionally made from windfall apples that might have otherwise been used for animal feed or left on the ground to rot. It also proved to be a cash crop, while solving the issue of shipping a difficult to transport and perishable crop.

In the United Kingdom and parts of France and Spain, cider is a strong category and has a loyal following. In the United States, cider has tagged along with craft beers during the last twenty years grabbing a tap here and a shelf facing there. Easy and pleasant to drink, it has a healthy image because it comes almost directly from the orchard.

Greg Failing, senior cidermaker at Woodchuck Draft Cider, has spent 20 years working with apples. He started making apple wines, then switched to cider when Woodchuck founder Joseph Cerniglia decided the category had a chance of developing in the U.S.

"Our customers are 60 percent female and 40 percent male," Failing says. "Our marketing is really word of mouth and people showing friends our product."

Woodchuck markets a range of ciders, ranging from Dark & Dry 802, which is less sweet and more tart to appeal to beer fans, to Granny Smith, which is fairly dry and is almost wine like. "I actually made the Woodchuck Amber to be as apple juice-like as possible. It is sweet and fresh, with some carbonation and alcohol," Failing says.

Magners is an imported cider from Ireland that national sales manager Mark Woodard calls "an historic alternative to beer." He says that where wine coolers and flavored malternatives come and go, cider has been around for centuries.

"It still amazes me when I go to a food show that people don't know what hard cider is," Woodard says. "Everyone has a story about a Grandfather on the family farm making a very strong cider. In reality that was likely more like an applejack than a cider."

Cider's continued growth since the 1990s means that more trial is taking place in the market, which is sure to generate more cider fans. The product range is growing a bit in the U.S., so people are now finding brands that better fit their personal tastes.

Even though cider has been around for centuries, this tasting of seven different varieties suggests the best may be yet to come.

Aspall Organic Suffolk Cyder: I had the chance to enjoy this brand at the World Beer Festival in Raleigh at a tasting conducted by Henry Chevallier Guild, whose family has been making cider in the United Kingdom for eight generations. This light colored cider has a nice level of sweetness at the start that is balanced by a good level of acidity. This would be an excellent summer cocktail party pour.

Harpoon Cider: Made from New England-grown apples, this cider is 4.8 percent alcohol by volume. This cider is a pale yellow color with a slight effervescence. Good level of acidity.

J.K.'s Orchard Gate Golden Scrumpy Hard Cider: Bruce Wright was nice enough to bring me a couple of bottles of this cider from the family-run organic orchard in Michigan. Cider has helped save the orchard, which has seen its juice business slashed by cheap imports. Cloudy, orange color it is 6.0 percent alcohol by volume and comes with a flavorful punch. More mouth feel and aroma than the other ciders in this tasting. The Northern Spies pressed for this cider give off a round sweetness. It is sort of the IPA of this tasting.

Magners Original Vintage Cider: This Irish cider has plenty of bubbles when it is poured, similar to a champagne, but it settles quickly. Light golden color with an apple peel aroma. Crisp and dry with 4.5 percent alcohol by volume. They use 17 varieties of apples in the blend of this cider.

Samuel Smith's Organic Cider: At first pour, this cider from the United Kingdom appears more beer-like than any of the others tasted. The head on this one hangs around a bit. Bright gold color, it is 5.0 percent alcohol by volume. The aroma has floral notes, while the flavor is overall crisp and fresh.

Woodchuck Granny Smith Draft Cider: If it were not for the carbonation you might think you were drinking a sauvignon blanc. This Vermont cider is 5.0% alcohol by volume and has a crisp, tart flavor that matches well with food.

Wyder's Dry Apple Cider: This Canadian cider pours bubbly, but quickly settles. There is a hint of fruit in the aroma. At 5 percent alcohol by volume, it is very smooth. Nice level of acidity to balance the sweetness.

Cider Sales Soar in the U.K.

Thanks to ads promoting cider poured over ice as the drink to enjoy at home, cider sales in Great Britain are up 29 percent during the last year.

Magners, an Irish brand, started a heavy ad campaign for cider about a year ago and was soon joined by other brands, pushing sales for home consumption to $897.3 million. This total now surpasses bitter and ale sales, which came in at $885.4 million.

U.K. consumers drink more wine than anything else at home -- $10.5 billion worth, followed by lager beer, $5.55 billion, then whisky at $1.46 billion and vodka at $1.33 billion. Champagne, at 633.8 million, falls in behind cider and bitter/ale.

How Do You Like Them Apples?

When most Americans think about cider it is the drink that they had as a child at a Halloween party. Say the word cider to an adult in Great Britain, Ireland or France and you will likely get a knowing smile. "Hard" cider is a traditional drink that has sustained many farmers and rural communities in many parts of the world -- including the U.S. -- for centuries. Cider making not only provided a way to make a supply of home brew, it also allowed many to convert a crop into a commodity that could be sold for much needed hard currency.

The cider market in the U.S. is still just an afterthought tagged on to the craft beer craze in most places. A good multi-tap pub may have a draught cider available. In most supermarkets you can find a cider or two, most often living on the shelves somewhere between the microbrewed beers, wine coolers and malternative beverages like Smirnoff Ice.

At one point about a dozen years ago I remember being a little shocked to discover that the cider franchise in the U.K. was, on a market share basis, about the same size as the U.S. domestic craft beer business at the time. However, cider was in the midst of a decades long decline in traditional European markets, which now thankfully has been reversed. In places like
Kent and Herefordshire, traditional orchard regions, trees have been removed since the 1970s so that the number is less than a quarter of what it once was. Now farmers are planting trees to try to catch up with demand for cider. About 5,000 acres have recently been planted with apple trees.

It's not just Britain that is experiencing a cider revival. Magners, an Irish cider maker, has seen rapid growth that caused the company to buy apples from Britain.

Industry reports say cider sales in the U.K. jumped an amazing 51 percent in July. No one is exactly sure why cider is suddenly the apple of the consumer's eye once again. Some suggest that people who reached legal drinking age during the growth of what the British call "alcopops" (i.e. Zima and the like) prefer something other than a pint of bitter. Others point to hot weather and even the FIFA World Cup as reasons. The growth of organic foods and the idea that cider is healthy are also cited.

Cider is one of those "change up" drinks that is perfect for summer. Most hard ciders are not sweet, but have a crisp or even dry flavor. They are the perfect second six pack to bring to a party. I'm not sure a glass of cider counts against the old "apple a day" thing, but it works for me.