OK, well after enduring that terrible cider from last week, let's see if this next one is more palatable. I have had this before in the past and so bought a new bottle to properly rate it against the competition. Today's cider will be Aspall Demi-Sec, a cider from Great Britain.



Aspall has a nice golden finish to it, and certainly has a fruity full body aroma. So from a visual and olfactory perspective, this cider is very appealing. The carbonation holds well in the mouth and it has a very pleasant overall taste, with no ascertainable after taste. It definitely has a feel of a true European cider, moreso that a traditional English cider, which in my personal taste is a good thing.
I will definitely recommend this cider as one to keep in the refrigerator for those warm afternoons, but also would be suitable for an after dinner drink too.

8/10 apples from me. Very nice.

The first cider I'm going to review is not one I actually bought myself. My wife came home today and surprised with me a cider I have never seen before. Julian Hard Cider out of California.

As you can see from the picture, this is a very clear cider. To my usual tastes, this didn't bode well. I'm also not sold with the oft application of "premium" that seems to be attached to every obscure bottle of cider or beer. If the drink is good, you won't need to sell me with a "premium" label. However, at $6.99 a bottle, you'd expect that it would live up to it's premium label, we shall see.
As to the initial smell of the beverage, there was very little actual apple smell which was disappointing. In fact, it almost smelled like medicine. Well, smell can be deceiving, but not often. My skeptical side was really turning on the alarm bells!
From first taste it was a fairly dry cider with no real crisp taste of apple at all. It also left a slight bitter aftertaste and dryness of the mouth (part in due to the 6.99% alcohol by volume I expect). I really didn't have much of a desire to finish this glass, and that is a rarity. I would expect this kind of cider from a homebrew kit, but not from a bottle that you just paid $7.

I really cannot recommend this cider to anyone, and would actually say to stay well clear of it. Quite a disappointment for my first review of this blog. That's OK, it must all be better from here on, right?

Overall rating:

3/10 apples.

How you like them apples? Not only a fantastic line from the movie "Good Will Hunting", but also a legitimate question regarding the plentiful fruit found throughout the world. Me personally, I love them. Granny Smiths, Golden Delicious, Honeycrisp and especially my all time favourite, Tentations from New Zealand. However, I really like apples when they are fermented in the delicious drink called cider. And this is what this blog is about, cider.

I remember as a young teenager growing up in England, drinking cider in a summer beergarden, having a ploughman's lunch and laughing with little care in the world. Good times indeed.
  However, it wasn't until a later trip to Normandy, France that I truly tasted a spectacular cider, and I was hooked. I had to find that cider back in the USA, it was going to be my mission in life. And lo and behold, I found it, at least temporarily. After one year, the only place in my hometown that stocked this cider no longer carried it, I had but only two choices. Order it online, or search for a satisfying alternative. And this is what brings me to this blog. I'm going to look into the wonderful world of cider, and in the pursuit of perfecttion, I'm going to review all the wonderful and not so wonderful alternatives along the way.

Another reason to start this blog is from a health standpoint. Recently I found that my body doesn't agree with Gluten and that means beer is mostly out of the question. Yes, there are gluten free beers on the market, but frankly, they taste awful. Cider is naturally gluten free and with more and more people choosing a gluten free lifestyle, I feel that cider will soon become a drink of choice here in the US, as it is in many places throughout Europe.

Before I leave this blog for today, I will leave you with what I consider the Holy Grail of ciders.....Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you....Dupont Cidre Bouche...



Until I find another cider better than this one, it will be the standard in which I measure all other ciders.

My next blog will include the first review of a cider I have tried recently.

Yours in good health!