What are the ciders and perries you’ve enjoyed most this year?

I’m not asking rhetorically – I’d like to know, please tell me. And whilst you’re at it, I’d like to know why they’re your favourites as well. Undoubtedly you’ll have tried different ciders and perries to me in 2024, quite possibly more of them and, given our international audience, from a range of countries whose output I haven’t tasted this year or perhaps even in any other. You’ll have had your own emotional connections to them, your own reasons one or another stood out, your own set of friends who perhaps you shared them with, or memorable foods you ate alongside them. And all of that tells me a little bit about cider and a lot about you, if you’re happy to share it.

This is the sixth time I’ve shared my baker’s dozen of favourite ciders in any given year. Albeit the very first of them, published on a whisky website on 31st January 2020, was written to a slightly different brief. Though it wasn’t quite the first article I ever wrote on cider, it marked – as I’ve mentioned before – the genesis of my regular writing on the subject, which ultimately led to Cider Review and to today.

Because of that, and because considering one’s favourite anything is such an inherently subjective and individual activity, this has always felt a personal list. So much so, I’m afraid, that I have occasionally gatekept it, slightly resisting very rare attempts to turn it into a broader list jointly compiled by our wonderful chorus of contributors. This is not, and has never been, a reflection of the general Cider Review opinion, closely matched though our tastes often are. With all its biases and idiosyncrasies and off-piste choices and flaws, it’s my list of ciders and perries and moments and favourites, and what it says it says about me.

But I’ve never really considered exactly what it is that any of the five previous iterations do say. Perhaps you have – perhaps there are subconscious messages that my collected choices have given off that have caused you to judge my opinions on cider one way or another. Perhaps previous lists have caused you to completely abandon all faith in my judgement on the subject of fermented apples or pears, but I doubt whether anyone cares that much.

Last year’s, dominated as it was by mistelles, ice ciders, France and – by extension of all three of them, sweetness – was probably as close as I’ve noticed to a pattern in any given list. A couple of makers have good-naturedly reminded me of this a few times this year, given my day-in, day-out drinking is usually done at the drier end of the scale. But what I felt, more than sugar, to be the hallmark of my Essential Case 2023 was intensity. Enormousness, voluptuousness, fullness of body, power of flavour. Almost everything on that list arrived on my palate with boom and crash. All were stunning, sensational drinks I’ll remember forever, but almost all, really, were about impact and immediacy. Knockout drinks for small, slow sips and perhaps just one or two glasses as you revelled in their sheer bombast and magnificence.

2024 – and I don’t want to delve too deeply here into what I dare say will be the basis of my contribution to our year-end reflections – has been something of an odd year in terms of my relationship with cider. On the one hand a year of astonishing privilege, of lifelong ambition realised and of unprecedented support. On the other hand, it has been the most exhausting year I can remember, exacerbated by an array of personal challenges and weirdnesses, particularly over the last few months. Looking back I’ve not written anything really of special note in these pages this year, and have, in any case, contributed by far the fewest articles I’ve written in any year since that first Essential Case of 2020. I’ve both been inspired by the level of enthusiasm for cider and (especially) perry within this remarkable community of ours, and despairing that it will ever quite gain a foothold in the consciousness of drinks writers and enthusiasts more broadly. I don’t really know quite what 2025 will bring, but I don’t expect I’ll write even as much as I have in 2024. Everything feels a little low energy, somehow. Perhaps it’s just the time of year.

Whatever it may be, the ciders I’ve seemed to find myself drawn to most this year have been longer and more contemplative drinks. Not to say that they’re shy on the flavour front – they wouldn’t be my most memorable of the year if they were; I will never, ever understand the mindset that criticises surplus of flavour as a fault, and in any case there are three drinks on this list that are, to much intent and purpose, basically Foxwhelp. But there is something, somehow, that seems a little more reflective in their nature than in the drinks that comprised my 2023 favourites. Clear voices that command the room by dint of what they have to say, rather than with the energy and volume of their delivery. An old colleague once divided great drinks into those which put you on the edge of your seat, and those which encouraged you to settle into it. The drinks on this list are, I think, predominantly the latter.

Who knows? For whatever reason, as I look back on what has been an unquestionably eventful year, these are the ciders and perries – in no order, as ever – whose flame still flickers most brightly.

1. Rull Orchard Foxwhelp and Discovery 

Having given it all that about contemplative, reflective drinks in the preamble there, we’re off course going to kick off with one of the most vivacious and brightly-charactered ciders I’ve tasted in this year or any other.

Rull Orchard is a producer which has improved out of sight in the last couple of years. When I first tried their wares back in 2020 (I think? Or was it 2021?) there were bottles that impressed me and bottles which I felt weren’t quite there yet. As with almost all new cideries – and I know that feeling myself all too well now – they were perhaps finding their feet with making, and with the direction they wanted their bottlings to take.

They’re now well on the way with that journey, with cold-racks, traditional methods and even tequila-barrel perries all under their belt, but what I think I love most of all is their focus on still, dry cider bottled under cork. It’s a style and presentation I have come to appreciate more and more with every year, and one you’ll find repeatedly in this list. They’ve applied it to a wide range of apples, and a flight of them are eyeing me judgmentally and will be reviewed early in 2025. But if any of the others live up to the pristine, crystal-clear, peal-of-silver-bells brilliance of this blend of two of my favourite apples I’ll be staggered.

All the joyous red and pink fruit of those two fabulous varieties, with the more pointed edges of Foxwhelp’s acidity reined in. A brave and beautiful drink that has given me so, so much pleasure and which would be in the conversation for best value-to-quality cider on British shelves right now.

2. Cwm Maddoc Moorcroft 2022

Cwm Maddoc are the masters when it comes to understated brilliance and to quietly delivering a precision and clarity of flavour whether in cider or perry that virtually no one else comes close to. It’s an astonishing skill to work with such truculent fruits as perry pears, in particular, and to consistently find, via wild fermentation, expressions that balance breathtaking delicacy with such clear and haunting aromatics.

I’ve loved so many of their releases this year – their Foxwhelp and Cornish Giant 2021, in particular, has been one of my house staples (though that might have been a last year bottling, actually) but it’s the Moorcroft that stood out above all others. A variety I have always wanted to see more of and, if I’m honest, have often wanted to like more than in practice I actually have. This year has delivered a few sensational Moorcrofts – more on which shortly – and this fragrant, dazzling, tropical beauty was the first off the rank. Perhaps my all-time favourite Cwm Maddoc perry. I’m not sure I can speak much more highly of a drink than that.

3. Smith Hayne Méthode Traditionnelle 2022

Smith Hayne has been a favourite producer of mine since before I started writing about cider and perry – so much so that I’m slightly surprised to see that this is only the second time they’ve been on my year-end list. But their flight of 2022 releases was just too good to overlook and the traditional method (to anglicise their preferred term – apologies!) was my favourite of all. When I tasted it back in June I predicted it being my summer go-to, and so it proved. We made our way through most of a case.

Interestingly, when I finally had the wonderful opportunity to visit William and his family at Smith Hayne this year, William told me that 2022 marked the vintage they switched from fermenting in old oak to fermenting in stainless steel. I tasted the 2022s next to the 2021s, and although the vintages themselves were, of course, very different, the clarity and precision of fruit (sorry, going to be a broken record with those adjectives today) in the 2022s was staggering. So much so that, along with Cwm Maddoc and Greggs Pit, the 2022 Smith Haynes influenced my own decisions as a new cidermaker. I promptly botched it all right up, but that’s another story. 

4. Cold Hand Alba 2020

Denmark doesn’t make much cider, but it has, in Cold Hand, one of the world’s very best producers. I encountered them for the first time at CidrExpo in Caen in 2020 and have been desperate to renew acquaintance ever since. My chance finally came at this year’s Cider World in Frankfurt, and what a joy it was to discover that time and tasting and broadening of context hadn’t lessened my feelings on their creations one iota.

I am, admittedly, ice cider-pilled and fortified-coded, as the kids have it, so am probably predisposed to fawn, but there are ice ciders and there are ice ciders, and seldom are they realised as beautifully as Cold Hand’s, or with such understanding of the importance of maturation.

At least three or four of the Cold Hands I tried could have graced this list, but my favourite of all was perhaps the least typical (if most in keeping with my 2024 choices) of their range. Cold Hand Alba is an ice cider fermented to all-but dry and bottled still under cork. With the weight and depth of wine, given its starting gravity, and the richness of ice cider given space to breathe by a drier, gentler delivery than its sweetest form would allow, this was a drink that positively beamed with orchard. I’m delighted that Cold Hand is now imported to the UK by Quality Ferments. Here’s hoping Alba shortly makes it across – I’ll be a customer the moment it does.

5. Palmers Upland Cyder Reserve Keeved Strawberry Norman 2023

You quite probably don’t need me to tell you that this is one of the UK’s ciders of the year, given its place on this list follows on from its several victories in awards that actually carry meaning and relevance. It has deserved every single one of them.

Perhaps a slightly more 2023-esque choice, as far as this list goes; full of body, high of sugar and certainly intense of flavour. But yet again it was the aromatic detail; the fine-grained delivery of fruit flavour, that elevated this cider not only beyond other keeves I’ve tasted this year, but beyond most I’ve tasted full stop.

It’s a testimony to an apple that I don’t know well, have likely overlooked and hope to soon know better, but most of all it’s testimony to a cidermaker of world class skill, who has managed to craft something breathtaking out of what was a pretty mediocre vintage. This is the first and only 2023 cider included in this essential case – a reminder that for all the importance that we rightly attach to apples, to trees, to seasons and to land, the term ‘minimum intervention’ does a disservice to makers who, whatever a vintage throws at them, must coax these myriad elements into coherent and delicious expression. Not many do so as reliably and compellingly as Phill Palmer. 

6. Eve’s Cidery Albee Hill 2021

Clarity, elegance, precision, complexity – whatever your choice of buzzword from this year’s Essential Case, Eve’s Cidery remains the lodestar. Visiting Autumn and Ezra back in 2022 remains one of my all-time favourite cider experiences, and one of the best and most insightful conversations around cider I’ve ever been a part of. If I’ve ever felt the connection more clearly between any given cider and the place and trees from which it is made than with Albee Hill as drunk in the Finger Lakes, I can’t remember it.

This is, year on year, one of my favourite expressions in the whole of cider’s bountiful canon, it’s the second vintage to feature in an Essential Case, and I’m tremendously sad that it’s no longer imported into the UK. (A few bottles from previous vintages still lurk on shelves both physical and digital – do not leave them there if you see them!) All of which of course would naturally make me enormously biased towards the 2021, the first vintage released after importing ended. Except that I tasted the 2021 not knowing what it was, as part of a fascinating lineup tasted with bottles unseen that Kris Kazaks kindly treated us to at RossFest this year. And this stood out even in that fantastic lineup. A sensational cider, rippling with soul, and another high water mark for how good the still, dry presentation can be.  

7. Find & Foster Natura Pastorum 2020

I had a different Find & Foster pencilled in on this list for most of the year, and as it happens it was another 2020 vintage traditional method – their Appellation. Then I tasted this last week, and knew it had to be the one.

Technically I’m not meant to call this traditional method: ‘method untraditional’, is how the label emphatically has it, a nod to the secondary fermentation being conducted, unusually, by wild yeasts present in the juice they add as tirage. It’s another indication of the thought that goes into the Find & Foster bottlings; the curiosity and consideration and the sheer consummate skill.

One of my favourite cider experiences of this year, without question, was chairing a discussion on the subject of tannins in cider at CraftCon. Every member of the panel was phenomenal, but when Polly started getting into the technical elements of tannin in cidermaking you could feel the energy crackling in the room and hear the sound of jaws dropping. There’s no question in my mind that she’d sit easily in the top five best and most interesting cidermakers in the world right now, and Natura Pastorum, with its nerve and poise, its kaleidoscopic complexity and considered brilliance is, in my opinion, the pinnacle of Find & Foster’s work to date. 

8. South Hill Goldwin 2022

I don’t think I’ve ever had so positive an impression of a cider from such unfavourable conditions in which to be drinking it. It was back in January at the Portland CiderCon, and the New York Cider Association was putting on a tasting event. Armed with small plastic cups we made our way round the tables, tasting a range of variably impressive stuff from a number of interesting producers and, amidst them all, one of the best still, dry ciders I’ve ever tried.

I’ve actually had a previous vintage of this combination of Baldwin and Golden Russet, which South Hill’s Steve tells me is a favourite of his (for readily apparent reasons). If memory serves I was pretty close to putting that one in whichever year-end case it would have lined up for. But this one has been virtually inked in since first sniff. 

One of the most vinous, creamy, textural and indulgent still dry ciders you’re ever likely to taste, and as close as I’ve ever encountered to the flavours of great chardonnay in malic form, I’ve wished I could buy a bottle ever since. It’s so winelike that it split the two palates I was tasting it with – James Forbes, if memory serves, was as impressed as I was, whilst Cider Explorer’s Natalia, who isn’t a fan of this style, was unmoved. But if your tastes run the same direction as mine, or you’re of the compound drinking disposition, make sure you buy this if you can.

9. Epli Sideri Hardangergutane Vindpust 2022

It’s as if James Finch, who’s been writing about this sort of thing far longer than I have, knows what he’s talking about. He picked the 2020 edition of this cider as one of his own year-end favourites in 2022, it having just won supreme champion at the International Cider Challenge. Not having had a chance to taste it, and just becoming dimly aware of how good Norway’s cider output now is, I was greatly jealous, but didn’t think much more of it.

Until I found myself in Bergen Airport in March – not a place I had on my bingo card for finding one of my ciders of the year – and encountered its remarkable aspirational cider duty free section.  I filled my boots, out of respect, finally reviewed them a month or so back, and whilst I found several of them delicious, Vindpust was simply on another level.

Much Norwegian cider is characterised, inevitably, by the energy and freshness and verve drawn from the culinary apples they use. That’s a wonderful thing, as in all drinks – you wouldn’t write off Chablis, say, or Sancerre or Pilsner for their brisk freshness. But Vindpust, somehow, has found weight and depth that, skewered by that Hardanger acidity and brightness, made something new and magnificent. I compared it at the time to some of Pomologik’s creations, which should say it all, really.

10. Ross-on-Wye Foxwhelp Oak Cask 2022

Bias, preference, personal taste – however kind you want to be with your adjectives, I’d understand you levelling them at me here. Ross are one of the two constants of this list, single variety Foxwhelp has long been a weird perversion of mine, as one maker once had it, and this one has not only been in an oak cask, but in a peated whisky cask from a distillery on the Isle of Arran, the place I fell in love with single malt. If there’s a more Adam Wells cider currently out there, you’d be hard-pressed to find it.

The thing is though, I’d argue with anyone that Ross-on-Wye, in 2024, have put out more world class ciders than certainly any other UK maker I’m aware of. I had, for instance, the oak cask Flakey Bark 2022 virtually nailed in as going in this year. The Major 2019 and Bisquet 2020 from the 500ml special releases are two of my favourite bittersweets of this year, and I’ve probably drunk more of them than of any other Ross besides Raison d’Être in 2024. Talking of which, 2022 was my favourite Raison since 2018 on first-release tasting. And since this is the UK’s year of Moorcroft, a word for the sensational expression launched at the festival. There have been others, too.

But even amongst them, this Foxwhelp stands out. And what’s remarkable is that it has also stood out to people who don’t share my love of the variety, or my weird fondness for peated whisky cask ciders. It’s just that good. It would seem anomalous in this year of complexity over intensity, except that what I love about it most is just how complex the particular nature of its intensities is. 

The hugeness of its fruit offset by that beautiful barrel, acidity melding with wood and time, the unbreakable character of Foxwhelp booming with 2022 ripeness, but never shrieking or needling. Drinking this is like watching a nighttime thunderstorm far away across the sea, in which you see all the little details – the flashes of lightning, the heavier bursts of rain, the roiling waves and the bruising, purple-gold clouds – both in their own individual light and as constituents of an operatic whole. If it’s not my favourite cider on this list, it’s almost certainly the one I’ll end up drinking the most of. 

11. Redbyrd Asters in Gold 2017

The final entry to this list in terms of when I tasted it – just last week with a friend in Herefordshire. But from aroma alone it was already elbowing out other worthy contenders, and by the time I’d tasted it there was no question.

Redbyrd is one of my favourite cideries – making up a trio of Finger Lakes makers in this list, and underscoring the depth of talent and fruit quality in that magnificent cider region. The elegance and clarity (buzz buzz) of this cider sit alongside anything on this list, but what elevates it to a rarefied position is the effect that seven years of ageing have had on the bottle. It’s a blend of mostly English bittersweet and bittersharp varieties, though in the Finger Lakes climate and with the age of the trees used, they’re nowhere near the tannin levels you’d see in the UK. Rather this expressed as peach juice, tarte tatin, buttered toast and spice, all fullness and layered harmony.

I sometimes forget that we live in a bit of a bubble as cider lovers, and that even within the bubble there remain questions over the ageing potential of cider and perry. This bottle, still vivid in the freshness of its youth, but the flavours blooming and burnished by lees and years, is the sort of thing I want to put in front of anyone who ever asks that question again and just say: ‘you tell me’.

12. Little Pomona Sum of the Parts 3

In 2017, Little Pomona filled some Ornellaia casks with Foxwhelp and Ellis Bitter. Those casks have gone on to produce or support, in my view, some of the greatest ciders of any style bottled anywhere by anyone. And seven years later they’ve done it again.

An odd quirk of this list is that every other iteration has featured a Little Pomona that sprung from those casks: whether the sensational Art of Darkness 2017 #1, which for a long time was (possibly still is) my favourite dry, still cider ever, or the Brut Zero traditional method which glowed with red wine cask Foxwhelp at its core.

There can’t be much left of what went into those barrels now, but if Sum of the Parts 3, drawn from the portion of 2017 Ornellaia Foxwhelp that went into their Foxwhelp ‘Solera’ is their swansong, then what a swansong it is. Lovers of those 2020 Art of Darknesses (hello!) will instantly recognise the haunting red fruit and rancio tones, last seen in Sum of the Parts 2, another that I adored, and which only didn’t feature on this list because Brut Zero edged it out. Here, with seven years of maturation, those flavours are at their most stately, harmonious and balanced. 

It is the grandest face of Foxwhelp, no longer punk or edgy or aggressive, but rich and sonorous and august, yet still with nerve and tension and structure. In its layers and layers of flavour it is probably the most complex cider I’ve tried this year. An astonishing legacy to exceptional casks, even better fruit, and makers who have changed aspirational British cider forever.

13. Kevin Minchew The Last Hurrah 2001

Of course it’s the Last Hurrah. It was always going to be The Last Hurrah. There was no chance of it being anything but The Last Hurrah, and in fact if it hadn’t been The Last Hurrah, I’d hope that most of you reading this would have dispensed with any last scraps of credibility you might be affording me.

Technically this is a bit of a cheat, since the 2001 traditional method Moorcroft from Kevin Minchew was also the 13th on my list in 2022, when it was unreleased, with no plans for release ever to take place; a relic from a lost era of cider that neither I, nor most of my closest cider friends, had ever been part of. 

But this year, through the collective effort of some of cider and perry’s greatest champions, this staggering, sensational, 23-year-old Moorcroft, still awash not only with fruit but – tellingly – with distinct varietal characteristics – has been brought to the world, or at least the British market, and the response has been as you would hope and expect, but as responses to cider and perry so rarely are. Sold out virtually everywhere, glowing reviews even from drinks writers who might never otherwise give cider and perry much of a look.

Aside from its compelling testimony to just how brilliant a producer Kevin Minchew was and is, The Last Hurrah is a standard on the hill for cider and perry more broadly. It says here we are. This is us. This is what these drinks are capable of, and if you think otherwise, if you write them off, if you joke or condescend or ignore them, you are wrong and you are missing out. It is a drink of awe and wonder and inspiration. Of tree and fruit and maker and cask and time. A Last Hurrah whose notes will resound for decades yet to come.

Conclusions

Very few, as usual, except to marvel once again at the depth and breadth of the world of cider and perry, given how many brilliant, genius makers there are whose creations there wasn’t room for on this list. There’s no doubt in my mind that the product is there, the quality is there, the range of styles and flavours and the capacity to capture palates both casually and dedicatedly interested is there. The best of cider and perry are radiant right now, and ‘the best’ casts its tent over a far wider swathe of expressions than it did when I first compiled one of these lists. Getting hold of something remarkable, mind-broadening and game-changing is easier than it ever has been. They just, as ever, need people to know.

Possibly this will be the last of these lists that I put together. I don’t know – history has proven that I’m too finicky and variable of mood to reliably say anything definite. At this moment, writing this, it feels like a last time, but perhaps come spring or so I’ll find energy and angles and motivation again. It often seems to be the way. But whether or not this is a last Essential Case, my heartfelt thanks as always to everyone – a record number of you – who has read and supported us this year. I say it repeatedly, because it is repeatedly true: cider is lucky to have you. And so are we.