Made by: Pilton Cider

Made in: Somerset

Style: Medium Sweet

ABV: 4.5%

Carbonation: Sparkling

Bought: Good Spirits Co. Wine & Beer, Glasgow

Price: £5 (37.5cl bottle)

Producer’s website: Pilton Cider

Pilton Cider is a Somerset-based artisan producer that specialises in creating whole juice sparkling cider using the somewhat arcane but increasingly popular keeving technique. I’ll let Pilton explain: ‘Keeving is an artisan method for making naturally sweetened cider [which] involves the formation of a pectin gel, which floats to the top of fresh pressed apple juice in translucent tanks. The gel traps nitrogen and is removed. Starved of its essential nutrients, the wild yeast fermentation stops early, leaving natural sugars from the apples themselves to sweeten the cider.’ Got it? Good.

The company collects all of its apples from traditional cider orchards in and around the parish of Pilton and allows the resulting cider to slowly ferment for six months in its cool Victorian cellar before bottling.

The cider I’m having a run at tonight is their 70% fermented Solstice Late Harvest which was bottled on the Spring equinox and released on the Summer solstice. Which is nice.

A naturally sweet keeved cider, it’s made from bittersweet cider apples slowly fermented with wild yeasts and is neither sweetened nor pasteurised, just the way we like it.

TASTING NOTES, AFTER A FASHION:

This is near the extreme other end of the spectrum from yesterday’s bone dry bad boy from Tim Oliver and is deep amber in the glass with plenty of life to it. So much life, in fact, I narrowly missed losing an eye when I uncorked it rather too carelessly, wrongly assuming it would be only lightly sparkling and a bit subdued after a heavy chilling. Anyway, it looks the part.

On the nose it positively reeks of rich, spicy fruit with a sweet fudgy layer and some of that lovely musty yeast that characterises naturally made ciders.

In the mouth it’s a full bodied and chunky with lots of plummy, raisiny Christmas cakey richness and sweetness. Plenty of fine bubbles to keep it pinging around your taste buds and setting off little flavour explosions. It’s also noteworthy how quickly the up-front sweetness fades to leave a sharper, dryer finish which stops it well short of becoming sickly or overpowering. Instead, you’re left with a clean, crisp afterglow of the flavours and a lovely spiced perfume on your breath that makes you want to do nothing more than have another swig.

It’s more of a dessert cider than anything else with a lot of weight, a lot of sweetness and a lot going on generally – but it’s easy to imagine yourself nursing one after a big meal, maybe in front of a log fire with a good book and a deep sense of wellbeing.

4️⃣/5️⃣