Well, 2024’s down to the lees in the bottom of the bottle, and whatever your take on it, it’s been something. We dare say many of us are keen to flee into 2025 as fast as possible, hunker down and wait for all this to blow over, but we hope that all of you reading this can look back on all or part of the year with some degree of rose-tinted (possibly cider-tinted?) glow.

We shan’t labour this introduction, since we’ll cover much ground below, but we do want to open with a huge thank you to everyone who has made this, somewhat surprisingly, a record-breaking year for the site. Our first year beyond 100,000 hits and comfortably our biggest year-on-year increase in terms of both overall hits and individual visitors ever. Long live aspirational cider and all who sail in it.

As is customary, we’ve offered all our contributors from this year the chance to say a few words to sign off 2024. There’s never a set theme – they can write whatever they want. Reflections on the state of cider, favourite bottles, what they really think of Adam – it’s up to them. In true Cider Review style, tasked with writing ‘a couple of hundred words’ they’ve all ignored that suggested word count absolutely, and we wouldn’t want them any other way.

So settle back, enjoy the collective musings of our apple-scented band (in reverse alphabetical order, since those smug editorial folk in the primetime A and B slots always get to start normally) and we’ll see you the other side of our traditional January ‘winter dormancy’. Cheers to cider and perry. Happy New Year. 

Ruvani

After my exciting debut into the world of cider writing, I have definitely been quieter than expected this year. However, what I have certainly been doing is drinking and exploring the vast expanse of flavour expression that is American cider, with a fabulous jaunt around the Finger Lakes, Upstate New York’s legendary cider apex, and a wonderful visit to New York Cider Festival with the brilliant Adrian Luna, better known as @hardciderguy.

I loved the Finger Lakes and the delights found on their scenic green shores, the russet Dutch barns dotted between fields of glossy gleaming apples, pert and ready for picking in the pastoral early autumn when we visited, hills rolling and roads winding between tiny towns of slatted houses and orchards as far as the eye can see. It was my first time being truly surrounded by apples, which isn’t as strange as it might initially sound. I mean, how often in life do you get to be completely engulfed in a landscape of apple trees, wandering between lipstick Idareds and treacle Kingston Blacks. I think of myself as a city gal, so my fondness for the rural charm of the Finger Lakes surprised me. Our first stop, at the Finger Lake Cider House, plunged me straight into the idyllic world of Cider Country, with a menu of such spectacular elegance that it would have been frankly embarrassing not to order every single thing. Which of course I did. Three flights of gems like the crab-apple-tart Pioneer Pippin, delectably succulent and aromatic Young Cider and badass-pungent King of the North and I was ready to up sticks and move. We try to travel with our car because I hate leaving good booze behind (and my husband has an affinity for purchasing large numbers of vinyl records), and I can assure y’all that a Finger Lakes bottle or two will be opened on Christmas. I sincerely regret not buying a larger (or second) bottle of their delectable Pommeau as I managed to slug my way through most of it before we came close to returning to Texas. No, I’m not always a classy cider drinker, but I am always an appreciative one.

Other highlights include Star Cider’s hugely impressive selection (yep, everything on the menu there too), especially the delicately oaky yet bright Frisky Whiskey and rustic apple-pie-spice Apple Crisp. Couldn’t leave without their t-shirt. South Hill also had a great range in a gorgeous ambient grassy taproom, with the funky apricot String Theory and tangy wild Dabinet Keeved really standing out. Our trip to Donovan was really special as it was our final cidery and sits perched on the banks of Lake Ontario so you can sip your cider while sitting among rows of warm, cosy apple trees and gazing across an infinite blue-grey horizon. The Finger Lakes really is a cider-nerd’s paradise, and I hope to get there again sometime.

Meanwhile, in NYC I had a whole other type of Amazing Cider Experience at the New York Cider Festival, organized by the New York Cider Association. It was incredibly fun trying a wide range of wonderful ciders from all over New York State, and particularly special being in a diverse and inclusive room with so many passionate and dedicated cider producers and advocates. The room positively buzzed with energy and engagement as producers shared their stories while drinkers compared notes and discussed varietals. Just a few of my top picks include Seminary Hill’s bitchin Hen’s Teeth Apple Dessert Wine, Pennings Farm Cidery’s tingly-tart The Continental wild cider, Grisamore’s indulgently tannic Golden Russet, and Orchard Hill’s lip-smackin Ten66 Single Barrel Pommeau. 

 The after party was an absolute blast – a fantastic opportunity to spend more time talking cider and learning about the New York cider community, as well as getting a taste of the real good stuff that only comes out after hours (shhhh!). Huge thanks to the awesome Adrian Luna, the New York Cider Association’s membership and events coordinator and fellow CiderCon scholarship alumnus for inviting me to this utterly joyful event.

I tried something close to fifty ciders, including a superbly curated cider and cheese pairing event, which far from making them all taste the same or wear out my palate instead gave me an even greater appreciation of the depth and breadth of flavour that cider makers achieve, the glorious nuanced complex flavour profiles different apples offer, and the endless possibilities presented by blending. While I am still relatively early in my cider journey with so much more to learn, it’s a process I’m enjoying every moment of. Cheers to a cidery 2025!

Patrick

Fair warning: I sometimes call myself the grumpy old man of cider, so my 2024 recap isn’t all roses and sunshine. But since we’re amongst ourselves here, I don’t need to keep up the effusive good cheer and positivity of customer-facing social media communication – it’s good to be honest with yourself. For that matter, maybe consumers need to hear more about the many challenges involved in getting that bottle of cider into their hands.

Climate change has got to be on the mind of anybody involved in making an agricultural product like cider and perry. When many of the fruit trees were blooming here in Germany, we experienced an unfortunate – but meanwhile all too familiar – early warm spell followed by 2 weeks of wintry temperatures. This caused varying amounts of damage; hardest hit was the South-East which reported up to 90% loss of apple crop. Overall the harvest was the lowest since 2017. On the bright side, prices for juicing apples spiked to historic highs, which is good news for traditional orchards: a newfound profitability might persuade some of the owners to put more effort into maintaining and restoring these orchards.

Wet summer months brought increased disease pressure and low brix levels; but also provided a second year of welcome respite from the extreme drought of 2022. Many old pear trees looked better than I have ever seen them, since we started making perry in 2019. The topic of climate resiliency is finally being talked about more. After years of inaction, there is suddenly an exciting level of activity regarding things like rootstock development, own root trees, improved pruning practices, evaluating resiliency of varieties, and more.

A flagging global economy and changing consumer preferences are the other big concern. Fine cider is still struggling to gain a foothold in Germany. Increased cost of everything from bottles to shipping, exacerbated by a dip in discretionary consumer spending, isn’t helping. Luckily we are spared the neo-prohibitionist excesses of the US, but the recent research findings on health impacts of alcohol are certainly driving an increased interest in the low-and-no segment. It remains to be seen whether cider and perry can take advantage of this trend. 

In any case, the situation for the sub 10,000L artisanal producer remains dire. It’s been encouraging to see a few more of these popping up across Germany. But I worry that many of us won’t survive for very long, if we can’t spark more awareness and demand for our offerings. Nobody expects to get rich on cider. But you would like to not lose money; and maybe even have a bit left over to invest back into the business. 

If Perry Writers are Idiots then perry- and cider-makers are lunatics, driven by the desire to capture the perfect essence of the fruit and orchard in a bottle; and the need to share this creation with the world. Well, cheers to lunatics, I say! May 2025 be kind to them.

Laura

I am a very Christmas orientated person. I think I experience a mild Seasonal Affective Disorder each year. Focusing on the twinkling lights whilst baking festive treats with my daughter helps me to ignore the existential dread that winter conjures up in my soul.

It perhaps goes without saying then, that I am not into New Year at all. By this point, the celebratory mood is fading fast. All we have to look forward to is a seeming infinity of long nights, bleak weather and a grey mood. Failed resolutions. The endless wait for a January payday. But, despite this, I harbour no resentment towards winter. It is seasonality that gives me the most joy in one of my great pleasures: cider and perry. Their cyclical nature is one of the things I love most.

The trees are dormant now. The next job for the orchardist is the winter prune, getting the trees into order ready for a new growing season to kick off in the spring. And there will be new growth, then fruit, then harvest before we roll back into winter again. As someone who doesn’t have to do the hard graft, this undulation through the year holds great romance for me. For those who have to put in the work, this year has – on the whole – been trying.

The most interesting piece of information I heard about the 2024 growing season came from a winemaker. I was visiting the Louis Pommery Pinglestone Estate in Hampshire. Will Perkins, the head winemaker, told me that there hadn’t been a window of more than six days without rain between January and October. That’s quite incredible. In the vineyard, these wet conditions created huge disease pressures that had to be carefully managed to produce any quality fruit at all.

Of course, there is regional variation, but this got me thinking about how difficult the season has been for growers of all colours. The figures from Defra show that England had its second worst harvest since records began. Oilseed rape, wheat and winter barley crops all saw massive decline.

Many cider makers are also reporting a poor yield this year – expected in some cases after a bumper harvest in 2023. My own young eating apple trees exhausted themselves last year, leaving us with the exciting task of harvesting one solitary apple a couple of months back.

The weather has also played a part, with wet weather leading to poor pollination, variable sugar levels and problems with scab, canker and mould. This was crowned with late ripening in many areas. These issues were reported in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and North Yorkshire.

However, some producers in the East Midlands came back to me with a more positive picture, with some bumper crops to be found in Nottinghamshire and North Northamptonshire. Again, ripening was often late, but sugar levels were good when the fruit was finally ready.

Having written about fireblight for Cider Review earlier this year, I was sad to hear that it was a contributing factor to a poor showing for perry pears at Oliver’s Cider and Perry in Hereford. Worse still, our final fireblight-free zone in Jersey was declassified in September, showing that the disease is still a significant cause for concern for growers.

All that remains then, is to shake off my hibernal funk and find the positives where I can get them. I am crossing my fingers that we will see better days for growers in 2025. Where there is fruit, there is hope. Perchance the small 2024 harvest will be perfectly formed and create magnificent cider for us all to enjoy at next year’s Christmas table.

Jack

2024 has been a year full of inspiration and learning on the cider and perry front. Left, right, and centre, some of my favourite memories of the year have come from orchards and the people that tend to them. The Ross Cider top-grafting in Albert’s HMJ orchard is a great way to catch up with friends and actively see old varieties of cider apples have a chance at discovering a contemporary audience once more. Jessica’s hillside operations in Monmouthshire with Three Saints Perry & Cider still fires my synapses – seeing her majestic old perry pear trees (Burgundy, Top Tree, Crystell, and more) still standing and fruiting, well, it’s magical. Finally getting a chance to see Martin’s orchards at Butford Organics, with Coppy, Teddington Green, New Meadow varietals all standing tall – I can see why Chris at Cork & Crown loves visiting (some very nice free range eggs as well!). Then from the countryside, right into the heart of the city and London Cider Salon this year, held in the upper floors of the Tate Modern, with all those wonderful producers available to talk to, well that was just blooming brilliant!

On the Toye’s Cider front, it’s been a joy. I’ve laid down the most juice I’ve ever pressed in a season (1171 litres). A heavy tilt towards perry this year – I think it’s nearly a half and half split for the first time. Why that ramp up in production? I have successfully registered the company this year and I don’t want to run out of stock in 2025, or if I’m being less optimistic, want some stock to age in bottle. There’s some demijohns bubbling away with varieties I’ve never worked with: Rock, Dead Boy, mystery pears, mystery apples. I’ve planted Strawberry Norman, Eggleton Styre, Crystell, Fig Tree Pear, and River Great Ouse Pear in a few orchards this year, tending to them and watching them grow is a good feeling too. It’s all a lot of fun, and if elements of adult life can feel repetitious and a world away from where you thought you’d end up in life, then this at least feels natural and meant to be. On to my Top 5 Ciders and Perries of 2024!

Whin Hill’s Brandy Perry 2023

This was the first full year that Mark and Lisa have offered single variety perries as well as ciders. It was choice between Brandy or Thorn, but as I knew so little about Brandy at the start of the year, it’s been a pleasure to get to know the flavour profile a bit more. Juicy and tannic, I think it will age well, and hopefully raise the profile of this variety a bit more with the tourists that visit North Norfolk throughout the year. Here’s to more Brandy perry!

Kevin Minchew’s The Last Hurrah 2001

A late edition to my list, and like the Bollhayes 2003 cider, a moment of history in the glass. Mike pointed out Kevin to me at RossFest this year, but he was deep in conversation. I’m so looking forward to the Dec 28^th Cider Club, which will have happened by the time this goes out. To hear him speak about this perry is sure to be very special indeed.

Butford Organics’ Coppy 2023

There’s something Lazurus-esque about this variety, first Tom Oliver, and now Martin Harris, gradually this perry pear is making its way back from the brink. Martin’s trees towered above us and looked extremely healthy back in October. I wasn’t prepared for just how much of a delicious juice bomb this bottling would be (and it’s on-sale now I believe). If it can happen to Coppy, it gives hope for other rare varieties that were once thought lost.

Ross Cider’s Foxwhelp Oak Cask 2022

When I brought these two heavily peated Lagg barrels back from the Isle of Arran, I don’t think I could have anticipated just how good the resulting cider would taste. One barrel went to Albert, one I used myself. I think this combination of peat and acid is sublime – Foxwhelp has never tasted quite so approachable and naughty at the same time. It was lovely to see the reception this bottling received at RossFest this year, I hope a few bottles stay available into next year!

Little Pomona’s Ripple 2022

James (Forbes) poured James (Finch) and I a glass of this gorgeous still Egremont Russet at Little Pomona HQ this August. Straight away I knew this would be up there in my top ciders and perries of the year. A lighting bolt moment if you will. Tasting blind you would swear this was an Albariño or Chenin Blanc white wine. The things they do with Egremont Russet at Little Pomona – sheer alchemy!

Ian

A busy year of relocation in 2023, meant limited opportunities for any cider-related tomfoolery, so I was keen to reconnect with all things cider and perry in 2024. Thankfully, the growth of events over the past 12 months has made this task something of a breeze, and the opportunity to catch up with familiar faces as well as meet so many new cider folk has been one of this year’s greatest pleasures. Did any of us really expect four Cider Salons, the welcome growth of cider clubs and a nationwide perry book tour to add to our diaries for this year? Let’s hope for even more of this in 2025!

Picking highlights from such a busy year of events is never easy but as a first-time attendee, it’s hard to look past the Three Counties Cider and Perry Association’s CraftCon as a new favourite. Two days of sessions from a second-to-none list of speakers, plus a Hogwarts-worthy dinner and a bottle share that fully justified the following morning’s headache mean this is already the first event already booked into my schedule for next year.

Beyond events, 2024 was a year I tasted more cider from up-and-coming cider makers than ever before. Yes, the usual names kept up their high standards but Stockley Cider, Seidr Tydecho, Pom, Vagrant and Redvers were just some of the makers new to me who released excellent bottles. The decline in availability of overseas cider is still painful, but the appearance of so many new makers alongside the continued growth of the Scottish cider scene has gone a long way to help to soften the blow.

In a year of so many positives for cider, the one huge low point was the loss of Susanna Forbes, a friend and inspiration to so many of us in the cider world and beyond. The many kind words spoken about Susanna in recent months only confirm the influence she had on the growth of modern cider, and if there’s one thing she would have wanted, it’d be for us to continue to enjoy, write, and talk about cider, so it’s a pleasure to include a bottle from Little Pomona in my list of 2024’s favourites.

So…to those favourites. Prefaced with the usual “impossible to choose” disclaimer, this is very much a list of those ciders that made an impression on me in a given moment rather than having any claim to “best of” status. If I scored ciders, there’d be a lot of nines and tens this year, these included:

Ross/Nightingale Foxwhelp Meets Discovery 2022: Great by the bottle but my first taste of this was on keg at the London Cider House back in January. Big bold Foxwhelp meets its quieter cousin, and they hit it off perfectly.

Artistraw Bisquet 2022: One of the most talked about bottles at the Bristol Cider Salon and rightly so. If I wanted to introduce someone to full juice bittersweet cider for the first time, this is the bottle I’d choose.

Little Pomona Hendre Huffcap 2023- A certain other perry might have stolen all the column inches towards the end of this year, but as an example of a young, fresh, fruit-driven perry, this is as good as it gets. Memorable.

Bea

This past October, I spent a month immersed (figuratively) in cider. In a gap between jobs, I did something I’ve wanted to do for many years and volunteered for a harvest — not a wine grape harvest, as I’d once planned, but an apple harvest! My partner Alfie and I spent a glorious week each at Hollow Ash Orchard, Little Pomona, and Ross-on-Wye Cider & Perry Company, getting to know three corners of Herefordshire, working with three different philosophies (and cider presses), and learning from three exceptional makers.

At Hollow Ash Orchard, where Clare and Jeremy make their quietly brilliant Cwm Maddoc perries and ciders, we learned the value of pacing ourselves and honing the process. The pressing setup in its big, open-fronted wooden shed full of dried leaves looks humble, but every assembled object is there because it fits perfectly; everything is in its place. Cwm Maddoc is a well-oiled (if highly manual) machine, into which we newbies slotted quite easily — once we’d donned a fishmonger’s worth of blue plastic, of course… With a pleasing splash, the carefully hand-gathered pears/apples slide from the grocer’s crate into a Belfast sink mounted at the side of the pressing shed. You swirl and bash them with a wire basket that somehow perfectly fits the tub, loosening stray bits of earth, grass, and leaves. Once they’re clean enough, you gather up a basket’s worth with a satisfying swooping motion and tip the fruit into the scratter which is rattling on the side of the sturdy green two-bed Voran. The pulp splatters gleefully into the equally sturdy, equally green trough below. The cheese is constructed with precision, the tannin-stained cloths inevitably folded around the oozing pulping at a slightly different angle each time. But once the pressure’s on, metaphorically as well as literally, the atmosphere instantly energises — ‘it’s just the right amount of peril’, as Alfie said. You watch the pressure gauge with half an eye as you quickly switch one steel milk pail, which has somehow already filled with clear-gold nectar, for another, before gingerly running the full pail to the tank waiting in the fermentation room. Thus, you cart more and more of the fruits of your labour to their stainless home for the next few months. And so on and so on — until it’s time for tea and cake again. 

If Cwm Maddoc is inspirationally methodical persistence, Little Pomona is innovation and ambition. Whether figuring out a new method for disposing of spent pulp (much intrepid forklifting was involved), handing out an experimental keeve for us to try, or making a spontaneous decision to ferment x with y for the first time, I was surprised by James each day. Of course, that’s not to say it that the LP shed wasn’t also a hive of process and method: cleaning that shiny press took over a day and involved my climbing inside a big metal cylinder in full waterproofs like someone in a sci-fi film before CGI. My days at Little Pomona taught me a lot about what makes their drinks so exceptional: seems like it’s something about the combination of their ability to make friends (resulting in more barrels, tractor trailers, and helping hands than they’d otherwise have access to), the fact that the pneumatic press allows the fruit to macerate in contact with the juice for longer than a traditional cider press, the extreme care taken with the fruit (we were taught to taste for perfection as the perry pears went by on their little conveyor belt), an intense dedication to elevating the cider category to the heights it deserves, and the inventive joy that pervades Bromyard. 

Finally, to Ross-on-Wye! Rather paradoxically, this ever-evolving place embodies tradition to me. Albert & co may make cider in quite a different way to how they used to, and the family business may have shifted and changed over the years, but it’s still a working farm, a truly agricultural place — a place where harvest is, as Albert confirmed to me, ‘the most important time of the year’. There’s nothing like scrabbling around on the ground for days to gather sacks of soggy apples, lifting crates of said apples along a distinctly grown man-sized assembly line until your arms ache, and experiencing life as part of a family compound to take you back to the olden times. What’s more, cider maker John’s reply to more than one of my ‘Why do you do it like this?’ questions was, ‘because that’s what Jean Nowell taught us’. At the latest when Mike proudly sat Alfie and me down to show us a YouTube documentary that highlighted the centrality of Ross to the Three Counties-based cider revival that Jean and the Big Apple were at heart of from the early ‘90s onwards, it was it clear to me that we stand on the shoulders of giants, and you can find them still at Broome Farm.

This has been first true cider year. I’d been drinking and formulating thoughts on fine cider for a while; early this year, I got in touch with the esteemed editors of this publication to pitch a ‘quince deep dive’. Since then, I’ve fallen far down a rabbit hole to which no end is in sight. Whether excitedly interviewing makers in their orchards or soberly taking my time with their drinks at my kitchen table, contributing to Cider Review has greatly enriched my life and brought me quite suddenly into the fold of this wonderful and (I hope) rapidly growing community. It has opened doors to so much: having first fallen in love with aspirational cider and perry at the Bristol Cider Salon, I branched out to more tasting events this year (standouts include the fabulous 99 Pines perry club at the Yew Tree). I also started judging competitions both at home and abroad: assessing cider in this way is a totally different skill, and one I am keen to develop further by taking the Certified Pommelier exam next year. More firsts included a cider podcast and a perry talk (thanks to those who persuaded me to do these). And true highlight of the year, even though we were only able to attend the first few days, was the inimitable Ross Cider fest: the first time I’ve slept in a tent in over a decade, and I didn’t even mind (very much!). I am so grateful to all who have welcomed me into this world, into their cellars, even their homes: the tireless duo of Adam and Barry are high on that list, but it’s a long list — you know who you are. 

Barry

This will be more a personal reflection than looking at the world of cider in general, as it’s been quite the ride for me in cider this year. Not least when it comes to Cider Review. In early February, while putting the final touches to what I thought would be my major piece of storytelling for CR in 2024 (the history of a lost perry culture in Germany’s West Palatinate), Adam asked if I would take over editorship. For obvious reasons (what a year he has had!) he needed to step back and concentrate on other things for a bit. I think I said yes automatically, as it was for a friend in need, then I realised what I had done and worried a lot about it for a few days, wondering what I’d let myself in for. I’d told Adam I couldn’t take the role of a lead writer as he had been, but I thought I could least organise and facilitate, and in what was perhaps an act of self-preservation, I put out a call to invite contributors to join our small collective. And they answered! Laura, Bea, Brett and now Andrew, not to mention returning Ruvani and of course Jack, who was a massive support. I’m really proud (and somewhat relieved) of what we’ve achieved this year in terms of broadening the voice of Cider Review, growing subscribers and breaking 100,000 views for the first time. Thank you all for your support! I still think the stories we tell deserve more eyeballs, so let’s see what we can do in 2025.

2024 was also the year I became an American Cider Association Certified Pommelier™. Under the watchful eyes of Gabe Cook, Darlene Hayes and outgoing ACA Director, Michelle McGrath, the exam was held in Europe for the first time, running during Cider World in Frankfurt at the end of April. It was an interesting experience, and though I was very comfortable with the theory part (I really did prepare a lot!), the structured sensory analysis part was of course the aspect that all of us sitting the exam were most concerned about. But I made it, as did Adam (no surprise there!), making us two of only eight ACA Certified Pommeliers in Europe at the time of writing. It feels rather strange at times, somehow undeserved, but it also very nice to have a kind of affirmation of the years making the drinks, as well as researching and writing about European cider and perry culture. I suspect we may be seeing more Pommeliers appearing on CR in the coming years!

Cider making feels like it took a bit of a back seat for me this year. I’ve been slow to release new creations and am sitting on a stash of unbottled cider going back to 2021. As it happens, we lost more or less our entire apple crop to late frosts this year, so there has been considerably less made this year, meaning I’ll happily dip into those reserves. And while I feel I have not been banging the drum of our cidery at all this year, (it took a back seat to life in general, as well as all of the above), we had some very nice events. From a booth at an amazing weekend event celebrating 1250 years of our village, to a tasting in a fancy restaurant in wine country near Heilbronn, to a tasting as part of the Yew Tree Rosstoberfest and, more recently, being made a partner of the Neckartal-Odenwald Nature Park. It’s really gratifying when people enjoy something you’ve made, and an honour to get to see them enjoy it! In-person events definitely seem to be the way to go for small cideries in Germany.

While I beamed in remotely for Rosstoberfest, I did make it over to Ross twice this year. Once for the Ross Cider Festival pilgrimage, and earlier in the year to attend the launch of Adam’s book, Perry: A Drinker’s Guide. Have you heard of it? Certainly one of my highlights of the year was being mentioned in such a wonderful book, and I bought an extra copy to put into our cidery whenever I convert the barn into a dedicated cidery space. “Whenever” being the operative word.

Going right back to the start of the year, and full circle to my personal review of last year, another major highlight of 2024 was finally planting our new perry pear orchard, phase 1 of the grandly titled International Perry Pear Project. I wrote about this soon after, and the uncertainty of planting an orchard in an age of change, but we could not have picked a better year to plant trees. Plenty of rain this year, no casualties, and the meadow is developing wonderfully. Phase 2 begins this winter at another site, and I may invite people to sponsor this phase too, to help cover the initial costs.

So, it’s been a busy year, and I expect 2025 to be just as busy, so I will be purposefully stepping back from a few things. My deeper pomology studies and the events we ran last Autumn were just not compatible with the cider maker’s calendar, and maybe our Bierwagen rental company will have to take a hit so I can focus more on the cidery and orchards again. Let’s see!

Andrew

The highlight for me this year was definitely the Ross Cider Festival. It was my first time at the festival and it didn’t disappoint. It was a really friendly event and a wonderful showcase of just how great the cider community is.

The Cider Club on the Thursday evening was a great launchpad for the weekend with some outstanding ciders paired with equally amazing food.   This then continued into Friday with more cider and food (shout out to Firebird Pizzas – I must have eaten my way through the entire menu over the weekend) and an excellent tasting of Renegade Rum led by Adam.  That was really eye opening as those rums were unlike anything I’ve had before and really highlighted the craft. Saturday involved more cider, more food, more music and some excellent talks including “The History of Cider in 20 Objects” from Elizabeth Pimblett and Elisha Mason from the Museum of Cider.   

The absolute highlight for me was meeting some really great people, many of whom are contributors to this website.  I’d definitely recommend it for anyone who can make it and I’ll definitely be there in 2025!

There have been so many great drinks this year but my case of the year would probably be:

Little Pomona, Yarlington Mill 2021

Probably one of my favourite noses on a cider ever. Oddly reminds me of a library; polished wood and old leather but mixed with spiced apple cakes and juicy orange.

Ross-on-Wye, Brown Snout & Chisel Jersey 2019-2021

Again a really interesting nose – chocolate milk, vanilla, bitter lemon and damp forest floor.  Really fruity in the mouth with lemon and orange pith and some wonderfully soft tannin. Hints of dark chocolate on the finish.

Artistraw, Jury 2022

Red apple skin, blood orange, tayberry, woody spices and polished leather on the nose. Pithy fruit and rich tannins in the mouth. A cider full of the magic of the orchard.

Rob Castle, Oldfield Perry

One I picked up at the Ross Cider Fest. There is something decidedly elemental about this perry. The nose is reminiscent of a forest after a storm; petrichor, wet stone, rich earth mixed with pine needles and an almost floral herbaceous note. Then like a wisp it’s gone and morphed into something else entirely. 

Palmers Upland Cyder, Keeved Special Reserve Strawberry Norman

I have a soft spot for unusual single variety ciders anyway but it’s no surprise this is making it onto so many highlight reels this year.  Red berries, damp first and mountain herbs on the nose with a hint of mature cheese. Sweet but not overly so with loads of rich dark berries in the mouth. 

Little Pomona, Cider Sessions Vol. 5 – Little Green Apples

Rich, sticky apple on the nose with a heady perfume from the barrels, and hints of Mediterranean flowers in the evening sun. Juicy, mouthwatering acidity with bags of fruit in the mouth with some soft, fuzzy tannins. 

Adam

There are 720 litres of cider at the bottom of my garden. They’re chuntering away in dirty-white plastic tanks and when I sit with them a while with a cup of tea, for that is the sort of person I am, they burp at me sporadically through their airlocks.

There’s a book I wrote on perry chucked somewhat unceremoniously into a corner of the lounge sofa. Empty bottles of mostello and pear mistelle and charmat method cider have found new life as repositories for artfully dead flowers on mantlepieces and sideboards. There’s a map of my favourite orchard on the dining room wall and when I open the kitchen cupboard there’s a kind of ice cider balsamic vinegar situation that I’ve never been quite brave enough to try and use blinking back at me in the sudden rush of light. 

Bottles are everywhere, bottles in wine racks, in little wooden crates, bottles taking up much-needed space under the stairs, bottles slowly forming ramparts around my desk upstairs. There are a few bottles on constant standby in the fridge, and there’s a case in the attic I need to remember to fetch back down now Christmas has come and gone.

Over the study’s growing cardboard crenellations there’s a certificate from a guild of beer writers. There’s another one on the desk that hasn’t found a frame yet, and one from CAMRA behind me for services to malic enthusiasm that handily came with a frame already. Standing on a cupboard next to pear and apple eaux de vies and a Domfrontais Calvados I found in Paris are a couple of tankards I keep forgetting to dust. There’s a tiny wicker hamper under the armchair with about thirty pocket-sized notebooks in it, dog-eared, smudged and filled to the last line with tasting notes. There’s a bigger notepad on my desk, open at a page marked ‘articles to do’. I’m writing all this from memory, because as I type I’m sitting in a barn with God knows how many bottles of cider and perry, having woken up in an orchard where I’ll be spending New Year’s for the second year in three. (On the middle year the cidermaker, now one of my best friends, was at mine).

Cider and perry have suffused my life completely. I don’t think there’s been a day this year when I haven’t spoken to someone involved in it, as a maker, a drinker, a retailer, a hospitality professional or as an enthusiast, like me. I think about it constantly, I co-host a podcast about it, I’ve taken (and helped set) exams on it, occasionally I give talks and tastings on it, somehow I’ve started actually making a bit of it and I’ve even written a book about it that the person whose work made me want to write about drinks said was ‘a cracker’ (thanks Oz). I share it with hundreds of people around the world, none of whom I would know were it not for a drink made of fermented apples or pears, and for the last five years I’ve written, on average, just over an article – or around 3000 words – a week.

Everything that I have learned and found and tasted and shared and thought and asked and written about cider comes back to here. To Cider Review, and the Saturday articles on Malt Review that begot it. All the luck, the talks, the visits to cideries, the occasional awards, the book, they’re all wonderful electrons orbiting this nucleus; the belief, however quixotic, in regular long-form content as a conduit for interest in cider and perry. The conviction that these remarkable drinks deserved the respect given by the sort of sites I read or wrote for in wine and spirits and beer.

Cider Review has, in my undeniably biased opinion, become such a site. This is our 475th article to date, and our 91st this year. We’ve reviewed 1211 ciders and perries from over 25 countries and shared interviews with dozens and dozens of international makers. And I’m inordinately proud of it all, and of every year of its existence, but it is this year, in my opinion, that it has taken its most important step, and for that I have almost entirely Barry Masterson to thank.

James Finch and I kicked off Cider Review in earnest back on 1st May 2021, following a little over a year of articles on Malt. Right from the start we had contributions generously volunteered by brilliant writers like Chris initially and later Jack and Barry himself, but the burden of writing fell, for the most part, on me and James. I knew we’d never manage daily content as Malt had, but at least weekly felt crucial if we were to achieve what I hoped we might, and better than weekly if we could. James and I both loved – and still love – writing about cider, but we were setting ambitious targets for ourselves, and occasionally our self-imposed remit became a strain (as I dare say showed in the output).

At the start of this year, feeling stretched by the upcoming book publication, various theatre commitments, Cider Voice, articles and work itself, I asked Barry whether he would consider taking on the editorship of Cider Review temporarily. Not only did he do so, but he has absolutely transformed the landscape of the site. We have had contributions from more new and individual writers than ever, covering our broadest range of topics and in the broadest range of styles yet, whilst remaining scrupulously true to the site’s only real tenet: that if it isn’t long-form, it’s the wrong form. So a huge thanks to Jack, James, Laura, Patrick, Ruvani, Bea, Brett, Andrew, Ian, Mike, Claire and Albert for their time, insights and beautiful writing.

Meanwhile Barry has improved and tightened everything behind the scenes too; there are systems now, schedules, spreadsheets (what a time to be alive) and someone who actually understands how website and ‘computer stuff misc’ works. When I came back to the fold to edit again, he kindly stayed in place. Cider Review is, once again, very much a two-player editorial game, as it was always meant to be. 

Most importantly, for my own selfish sake, 2024 was the first year in which less than half of the output on Cider Review was mine. In fact, I’ve only contributed a third. Occasionally I’ve felt guilty for not writing more this year, but most of the time it has been encouraging and restorative to remember that, actually, I don’t have to. Thanks to Barry’s editorship, the site is, at last, becoming what James and I envisaged it as in the first place; a broad collective of voices united by belief in international cider and perry and the cultures that coalesce around it. As for me, I’m beginning to feel the scales tip back from strain to joy. Long may that continue in 2025; here’s to the evolving face of Cider Review, and here’s to a life suffused with cider for many years to come.