I’m going to start this piece with a paradox, since I am 34 years old today and therefore well able to understand such things. The idea that something can both reflect the inherent, annually shifting nature of vintage, can be made from different blends of apples, picked from slightly different trees, aged in slightly different vessels … and still be recognisable as the same drink, or at least a drink with the same brand, as it was in its previous iteration. Consistency within inconsistency if you like; a cider-scented Ship of Theseus.

Brands, obviously, are the norm in the macro world of dilution and concentrates, where vintage inconsistency doesn’t really register because every step has been made to cauterise its influence. They’re also the norm in the recipe-book world of beer, where for all the inventive playfulness around the edges, a key tenet is being able to make exactly the same thing over and over again. Most, though certainly not all, spirits also fall into this category.

But what is it that defines an individual brand in a sector like aspirational cider where a degree of annual variability is not only expected but explicitly baked in?

One answer is that, in many instances, ‘brand’ is substituted for ‘variety’ or ‘orchard’. So and so’s Foxwhelp, for instance, or a cider made annually from such and such specific site. Since the majority of the latter, certainly in aspirational cider, feature large numbers of different varieties, the apples included in any given vintage’s cuvée may differ markedly, with commensurate variation in flavour, but this will be an accepted part of the offering – and in any case the final cider will often cleave nonetheless to an organoleptic theme. Welsh Mountain’s Prospect Orchard, for instance, or Eve’s Albee Hill, are always different year on year, but there is always something about them in the glass – though it is sometimes difficult to elucidate exactly what it is in writing – that is familiar and distinct.

Where ‘brand’ perhaps becomes a little more understandable as a term for a vintage-affected product is when a producer deliberately restricts themselves to a set of parameters in the making of a particular cider and applies those same parameters year on year. This is a key feature – indeed a regulation – for many traditional wine regions and appellations. In Bordeaux, for instance, a still red wine will be a blend of, depending on the appellation, varying quantities of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and/or Cabernet Franc, perhaps augmented with small amounts of Petit Verdot and Malbec. Different appellations lean more heavily towards one or other of those grapes, but broadly the parameters are fairly well set. 

Where individual châteaux might riff on the theme is through particular percentages of Cabernet Sauvignon, say, or in the amount of oak and the weight of new oak they might use in any given year. Not to mention, of course, the distinctions that come through any given vineyard’s particular terroir. But roughly, even allowing for annual variation, the consumer knows what they’re getting with a bottle of Château XYZ. It is not, next vintage, going to turn around and be a steel-fermented Zweigelt.

There isn’t actually too much of this in cider. Perhaps in part because much of aspirational cider follows the more experimental/adventurous (delete to preference) model extolled by natural wine. And of course because the average British cidermaker has access to a wider range of varieties than their Bordelais winemaking counterpart, thanks partially to the happy heterozygosity and climactic adaptability of the humble apple. But one cider that does more or less follow this pathway is Ross-on-Wye’s Raison d’Être.

Raison d’Être presents, in some ways, another paradox. The flagship cider of one of the world’s most famously single variety-focussed producers, and yet it is a blend. Made by a cidery with access to a bewildering spread of varieties, and yet it features the same two year-on-year. A combination of Dabinett and Bisquet – the two most common bittersweets in the UK – brought together by people who do more than the majority to propagate and promote rare and unsung apples.

And yet Raison d’Être is still, as the label has it, the quintessential expression of Ross-on-Wye. I had an entertaining conversation with two cidermakers of a certain vintage at the Yew Tree Cider and Perry Trials last month who expressed the opinion that Albert Johnson had ‘a palate for sharper apples’ and that Ross-on-Wye ciders ‘were getting more acid.’ I thoroughly enjoyed relaying this feedback to Albert himself, whose response was ‘I love bittersweet cider but I also love selling cider’. And indeed, as I’ve noticed for the last few years, there is a growing trend amongst aspirational cider consumers for higher levels of acidity. But Raison d’Être is a reminder of where the farm’s heart truly lies: with tannin-forward bittersweet varieties such as only grow in the west-south-west of the UK and the north-west of France. 

Raison d’Être then, contains elements that could in some lights be considered polarising. Not everyone likes tannins – or rather, not everyone is used to their textural impact – although the two years of ageing that Raison d’Être sees before release goes a long way towards softening any astringency. What’s more, Raison d’Être is always dry, and we have seen umpteen times that the tendency (at least in the UK) is for consumers to talk a markedly drier game than they actually drink. And finally, Raison d’Être is always aged in oak casks that formerly held whisky, and more often than not the peated whiskies of Scotland’s Islay, which some people aren’t so fond of because some people just hate fun, and who are we to judge them for that?

Which brings us to yet another paradox (and I’m not even done with them yet) – that a cider which might, on a number of levels, be considered ‘challenging’, and which offers a swathe of intensities and nuances for the curious drinker to explore is also, in fact, the cider that has become my instinctive ‘go to’ when I just want something soft and easy and comforting and delicious and which specifically doesn’t present any element that could be seen as overtly insistent. It is, as I’ve written in the past, probably my favourite cider.

And that, in turn, links back to our proposal of inconsistent consistency; how it can be navigated by a producer and perceived and accepted by a consumer. Raison d’Être, as I say, is a cider I love. It’s probably the aspirational cider I’ve drunk the most, and it’s certainly the cider whose new vintage I look forward to the most each year. And this means, entitled consumer that I am, that I Have Opinions.

We all, it must be remembered, have our preferences, and when it comes to Raison d’Être these are mine: I prefer the orangey flavour and textural robustness of Dabinett to the milder, yellower fruit of Bisquet. And whilst everything should always be a question of balance – although ‘balance’, by the by, is another matter of preference – I’d rather the twist of smoke was there than not. Because I happen to feel that the combination of smoke and bittersweet just organoleptically works, and certainly fires some pleasing, neolithic synapse in my brain. I also tend to think that Raison presents best, or at least most ‘Raison-ly’, at a higher ABV, though there’s not much the makers can actually do about that.

So those are my entitled consumer preferences, bred in part from years spent drinking the 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 vintages of this particular brand of cider. And, reader, you won’t believe this, but for the 2020 and 2021 vintages, the producer was brazen enough not to bear those personal preferences of mine in mind. Yes, in 2020 Bisquet was given, with malice aforethought, the dominant role in the blend. And in 2021 unpeated whisky casks were used with extreme prejudice.

This, it need hardly be said, gave this consumer a ferocious case of the ‘I reckons’. Bisquet forward? No smoke? How dare they change the formula to this cider that I love? How dare the makers and owners of this brand tweak their own recipe when I like the existing one? And this, I think, is one of the oddest paradoxes around brands of all: that they induce feelings of ownership in people to whom they do not actually belong.

Firstly, neither the 2020 nor 2021 vintages of Raison d’Être really changed the parameters of the cider. Both were still dry, oak-fermented blends of Dabinett and Bisquet aged for two years before release. And, as I admitted myself when reviewing them, despite their departures from what I had come to consider the Raison norm, both clearly presented as – or at least ‘felt like’ – Raison d’Être when I came to drink them. But most importantly, these ciders should serve as checks to the sort of consumer entitlements that I think are nonetheless relatively natural and human to feel. Raison d’Être is not ours – it is Ross-on-Wye’s. Just as the broader profile of Ross-on-Wye ciders, changing or not, is really in the hands of no one but the Johnsons and the rest of the Ross team. If Albert wanted to bottle an unaged, backsweetened blend of Gilly and Bramley and slap a label on it saying ‘Raison d’Être’ he would be absolutely within his rights to, though I’m respectfully asking that he doesn’t. People can vote with their wallets, of course, if they feel a brand has shifted too far from what they had come to associate with it. But that still doesn’t make the brand’s former identity ‘theirs’.

Indeed playing with the set parameters of Raison d’Être has given us a chance to see specifically what the components of this brand actually bring to the cider. I understand my Raison d’Être preferences better directly because of it. And since the 2019, 2020 and 2021 have all remained available this year, I have been able to adjust my Raison drinking to suit mood and occasion and company, whilst cleaving to my fundamental desire to drink Raison d’Être. Much as I enjoy telling Albert that 2020 and 2021 were the Raison d’Être ‘wilderness’ or ‘experimental’ years, my collection of bottles and my feeling toward the brand is far the richer for them both.

But I do have to admit that, despite that last paragraph, the 2019 – the last appearance of a Dabinett-forward, peated cask edition – has been my most regular Raison of the last 12 months. It is probably, now, the Raison I have drunk more than any other vintage, and of all the Raisons d’Être I’d say it is the one that has most improved since its original release, when it perhaps sat slightly in the shadow of the monumental 2018.

So I was very pleased to hear that 2022 would mark something of a return to ‘original recipe’. Dabinett-forward, peated cask. In fact the 2022 is distinct from its predecessors by just how high a percentage of Dabinett is featured in its makeup – a whopping 90% of the cuvée; just 10% short of the dream. (I joke, I joke, don’t come at me Bisquet stans, if you exist).

2022 was also a truly thunderous year. We’ve talked about the astronomical sun, heat and sugar levels of 2022 a fair bit now – certainly the biggest vintage since 2018, and markedly bigger than 2023 to boot. In fact it was such a ripe year that the initial blend for Raison 2022 sat around 10%, and had to be blended with other, lower-abv casks of Dabinett and Bisquet to hit the 8.4% that the British government idiotically recognise as cider’s maximum.

Anyway, preferences duly pondered, expectations duly set. As ever, this cider will launch in a week at the Ross-on-Wye Cider & Perry Festival, which you should absolutely all be attending. However, for the first time you can pre-order it here for £12 a bottle, with a 10% discount if you buy at least 6. 

Enough blathering. With a hearty happy birthday to me, and a much more muted happy birthday to Albert who, as we have previously discussed, is a three-years-younger hijacker of my special day, let’s see how Raison d’Être 2022 shapes up.

Ross-on-Wye Raison d’Être 2022 – review

How I served: Room temperature

Appearance: Burnished gold. Tiny spritz of fizz.

On the nose: It has, as almost every vintage of Raison does at this stage, the last trace of conditioning still upon it – a last wisp of fermentation sulphur that is always gone by Christmas. That aside, a huge, pillowy wumph (technical nosing term) of Dabinett orange skin, mixed orange citrus fruit and a touch of stone fruit which grows, the more you sit with it, into a riper tropicality. There’s a sense here of something at once lifted and earthy; woody and deeply floral. Almost pot-pourri. Almost incense, even. Forest floor. It’s fantastically complex and fantastically fruit-forward. And actually, to my admittedly heavily whisky-conditioned palate there’s not all that much aromatic impact of smoke. Just the remembrance of a faraway beach campfire etching an extra little aromatic curlicue.

In the mouth: A mammoth delivery. Biggest since 2018 by miles. Savoury, spicy orange – flesh, skin and pith. Something darker too – dried apple, dried apricot perhaps – entwined with a lighter, brighter, fascinating and distinct-among-Raisons lift of something like menthol and eucalyptus. The oak character is dusky, savoury, only lightly smoked (though there is more than on the nose) and fabulously integrated, giving a wonderful, earthy sense of union between dunnage warehouse and autumn apple orchard. It’s hugely juicy – this is a very fruit-forward Raison despite its oak. As with the nose, the longer this cider sits, the further it blooms into something riper, fuller, gummier and more tropical in its fruit. And then, as with the 2018, huge tannins crash in at the end, alongside a stronger impression of peat, reminding you of its relative youth. Personally I adore this now, but you can expect this to have a long, long life.

In a nutshell: My platonic ideal of Raison d’Être. I can’t remember ever enjoying a new vintage of it as much as this at the point of its release.

Conclusions

I am evidently, as the kidz and my cousin Justin might put it, ‘Raison-pilled and Ross-coded’, and in the name of standard transparency, I was also given a sample of this cider to review. So to a certain degree you should take my opinion here with an even bigger pinch of salt than usual. But, for what it’s worth, I’ll be buying at least a case of six straight away, possibly a case of 12, and then topping that up for as long as it continues to be available. And if your preferences align with mine, and you love the flavours of what we might perhaps cheekily term ‘classic Raison d’Être’, I’d highly recommend you buy bottles for yourself if you can. It’s even available in magnum this vintage, and I intend to be ruthless in elbowing my way to the front of the queue.

Wonderfully, for those of us whose role was not to sell them, at the point of writing this, there are four vintages of Raison d’Être available. The 2022 is, in my opinion, the best since 2018, but perhaps you’ll prefer the softer, Bisquet-led 2020, the lighter elegance of the 2019 or the smokeless but pleasingly full-bodied 2021. After all, within the appreciation of this single brand there is currently room for an unprecedented spectrum of preference. But, however paradoxically, you can be sure that all are ultimately Raison d’Être.