Is cider the next champagne?

Receive free Food & Drink updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Food & Drink news every morning.

As the bassist in the Grammy award-winning band Mumford & Sons, Ted Dwane is more used to being asked about folk rock than ferments – but when we speak on a sunny day in June, his new life as artisan cider maker is suiting him well. “It’s an obsession that takes you over,” says the 38-year-old. “Making something amazing from this fruit that would otherwise just rot. In the autumn I can’t drive past apples on the verge without stopping to pick them up.”

His Sussex cidery, Two Orchards, began as a lockdown experiment in 2020 with Mumford tour manager Fred McArdle. “I grew up drinking Sussex cider and I remember it being so elegant and clean,” says Dwane. “I was finding it hard to find ciders like that – so I thought, why don’t I make it myself?” At first they “scrumped” all their fruit from family and friends, but Dwane has planted 20 acres of orchards and the cidery now occupies a former cow barn near Dwane’s home on the South Downs.

The pair’s first cider proper, Two Orchards Traditional Method 2020 (£107 for a case, thefinecider.company), makes its debut this summer with a label by their long-time friend the singer-songwriter Laura Marling. Made from a mix of cookers and eaters from eastern England, and more tannic cider apples from the West Country, it combines the fruity crunch of a Cox’s apple with the sweetness of madeira cake, and a lively sparkle. 

Two Orchards makes sparkling cider in the “traditional method” – the same method as is used to make champagne. The fruit is fermented once to create a still cider, then given a secondary fermentation in-bottle to add the fizz. Like champagne, it’s aged on the lees (spent yeast) for two years before release to build finesse and complexity. 

It combines the fruity crunch of a Cox’s apple with the sweetness of madeira cake, and a lively sparkle

Traditional-method ciders have existed for 400 years – possibly longer than champagne. (It’s for ciders, rather than sparkling wines from France, that the first ultra-strong verre anglais, or “English glass” bottles, were almost certainly made.) The method fell out of fashion as cider was industrialised. But now, thanks to the craft cider movement, the style is being revived. “It’s the antithesis of mass-market cider,” says Felix Nash, founder of The Fine Cider Company, which supplies The Clove Club and The Fat Duck. “It’s cider you can serve in a wine glass or at a celebration.”

Some of the finest examples of the traditional method are made by Polly and Mat Hilton of Find & Foster, a cidery that works to restore ancient orchards around the Exe Valley in Devon. “Some of our orchards are hundreds of years old and contain varieties never seen before,” says Polly. “We maintain them with a flock of 30 sheep.” 

All their traditional-method ciders are a “field blend” of different cooking and eating varieties, which tend to be higher in acid and lower in tannin than cider apples – a combination that lends itself well to the traditional style. “If you were to use a very basic wine analogy, this would be cider at the white-wine end of the spectrum,” says Mat. 

Find & Foster Appellation Blend 2020 is crisp and thirst-quenching, with aromas of red apple skin, honey and beeswax. It has fine champagne-like bubbles and a touch of petrichor on the finish. Some older bottlings I tasted had aged beautifully, developing concentrated notes of stewed apples, pear skin, crystallised honey and quince (2020 is coming to market now, while 2019 is already here).

The first time champagne merchant Peter Crawford tasted Find & Foster’s ciders it was, he says, a revelation: “They had all the same texture and depth as a champagne, yet they were lower-alcohol,” says the founder of the award-winning Sip Champagnes. “There was so much in common between the two processes – it fascinated me.”

Crawford had recently moved back to his family seat in Fife in Scotland – a 400-year-old property blessed with its own orchards. He set about establishing his own cidery, the Naughton Cider Company, dedicated to producing traditional-method ciders “in the aperitif style. Clean and pure with that lovely line of salinity”. The cidery’s second release, Naughton Brut 2020 (£26), is a blend of 50 apple varieties, leading on Bramley and Cox’s Orange Pippin. Silver-gold, it’s fine-boned and mineral with a very delicate, creamy fizz.

Traditional-method ciders have been flying out of the door at La Fromagerie in west London – last Christmas sales even outstripped champagne. “We love pairing Find & Foster’s Appellation with Harbourne Blue, a tangy blue goat’s cheese that’s made just a 45-minute drive away from the cidery,” says La Fromagerie’s Joshua Page (who runs the cheese and cider tasting company fieldandorchard.co.uk). “The flavour match is amazing – but it’s also about the story. It’s clear what these cider makers are doing has caught people’s imaginations.” 

@alicelascelles