I like to moan about the weather as much as the next Englishman, but this year it seems pretty miserable. Granted, we’ve just seen a bit of sun (that’s probably our entire summer right there!), but it always seems damp and grey at the moment. Roll on Summer!
Which got me thinking. As i stand in my kitchen looking out of the window I can see the grass starting to grow again (it was cut less than a week ago) and that means the inevitable “when are you going to cut the grass?” will soon start to ring in my ears. Looking on down the garden, I see my kids climbing in the old apple tree and building a den below it’s gnarled branches. It’s not the prettiest look tree, but given it’s age and the fact it’s been climbed and generally tortured by two families with young kids, it still produces a decent crop of apples. And this is where my journey into brewing and wine making began.
Lumbered with a huge crop of apples and thinking there is only so much liquidised apple I can give T1 and T2 (they were babies at this point!), I thought I would re-visit my west country roots and make some cider. After all, how difficult can it be? Well, in fact, very difficult if your expectation is that you will be producing the mass produced, sweet, sparkling, ciders that used to line the supermarket shelves. However, if you have the taste for a proper cider then it’s not actually too difficult at all.
Little did I know that this experiment would very soon turn into a bit of an obsession. Spurred on by both my father and father-in-law, that would see me brewing around 75l of cider, several batches of beer and over 100 bottles of varying hedgerow wines each year (that was until T1 and T2 were older and the +1 came along). We’ve never had so many visitors and each one normally left with a bottle or two! I’m hoping I can return to production once T1 and T2 are old enough that I don’t get funny looks from their teachers when they go in to school and tell them that they were helping daddy make cider/wine/beer last night.
In the meantime, my love of cider has and will most probably always be fuelled by Thatchers. They simply make some of the best ciders you will ever taste and the range really does cater for everyone. So when I happened to read on Thatchers’ Facebook page that they have made a limited number of Thatchers Orchard Cut Gin, I had to get my hands on a bottle. Fortunately my parents know my love of gin and cider and beat me too it, what a great present!
The gin itself is well balanced with no one botanical overpowering another and there is an almost sweetness from the Katy apples. Drinking this straight, the gin tastes ‘hot’, quite a strong alcohol burn sensation in the mouth. However, as that subsides the flavours are fantastic. Thatcher’s suggest drinking Orchard Cut mixed with Thatcher’s Haze cider. Who am I to argue with that combination!? However, for this session I mixed it with elderflower tonic and well, I was pleasantly surprised by this combination. My personal taste with gins is always slightly biased towards the citrus flavours, so to like a sweeter G&T was a bit of a revelation for me. Far too easy to drink!
Price Paid
Around £35. Available from Myrtle Farm (Home of Thatchers Cider) if they have any left!
Tastes Like
A crisp gin with a little apple sweetness.
Would go well with
Thatcher’s Haze cider
Or
Fever-Tree elderflower tonic and a couple of slices of apple.
Recommended?
Yes – it contains apple so I think that’s one of my 5 a day!