Cider and Perry, what lovely drinks! They can be found in bars, bottle shops, booze festivals, back gardens, and… the Blavatnik Building on the Southbank in London – the elegant extension to the Tate Modern art gallery. It’s the second May Bank Holiday Weekend in the UK and time for the London Cider Salon 2026, organised and run by The Fine Cider Company (Felix, Aga, Emma, and Theo). Once again, they’ve somehow jinxed the weather (for the third year in a row), and we’re surrounded by a veritable blanket of glorious, sticky heatwave in the capital city once more. Just as well there’s numerous lightly chilled drinks on offer to quench our thirst. We’ve covered the 2023, 2024, and 2025 iterations of this annual event here on Cider Review. This year there’s more space, more producers, and more attendees. Everything is sold out a week in advance of the event. As Ria often mentions on her weekly podcast, Cider Chat, it feels very much like cider is going up! It’s fascinating to compare and contrast this annual event to one I’d been volunteering at the previous week: CAMRA’s Cambridge Beer Festival, specifically the Cider & Perry Bar at said event. Both have a dramatically wide age-range that attend, with demographics from all walks of life coming up to try the enviable range of liquid on offer. The London Cider Salon likes to serve exclusively from 750ml chilled bottle pours, whilst the CAMRA Cider & Perry Bar in Cambridge mostly (with a few exceptions) likes to serve from lightly chilled, fresh BIBs. Both have their merits. Both enrich the UK Cider & Perry Scene. Both bring joy to the lives of many that attend them.

There were four roving Cider Review reporters at the event this year: Anna, Brett, Joe and myself. You’ll have read their evocative words on these pages previously. I’ll just say what a pleasure it is to create the group chat for them leading up to this event, knowing there’s a small gang of enthusiastic writers that want to come along, experience the Salon, and share their thoughts with everyone here on Cider Review. Two conversational snippets that caught my ear and made me smile at the Salon this year are as follows… on the Wild West stand, an elderly man comes up to Matt Stephenson (the maker) and in a slightly clandestine, and proud manner, near whispers to Matt: “Your Foxhwelp’s at the top of my list at the moment.” You know you’re at a cider event when you hear a comment like this within the first 30 minutes of the doors opening. The second moment came on the inimitable Eric Borderlet’s table, I must say I’m getting slightly blasé about meeting Eric once a year at this event, what a privilege to have him here in London three years in a row! Mid-pour to a guest, the neck of Eric’s bottle briefly collides with the glass of the guest and makes a lovely ringing sound.

“What a beautiful clink Mr Borderlet!” they exclaim.

“Clink? What is…clink?” asks Eric, the word evidently being more idiosyncratically English than any of us realise.

“Clink is…onomatopoeic. Clink is…clink!” she replies, flicking her finger against the rim of her glass and producing the sound once more.

Clink is clink, and Eric Borderlet’s ciders, perries, and cormé (true service tree fermented liquid) are astounding as ever. On this international end to the Salon, Cristine Walter of Bauman’s Cider, and Andy Brennan of Aaron Burr Cider were to be found as well! I could listen to them talk about their drinks for hours on end. Before I hand over to Anna, Brett, and Joe for their thoughts, some standout drinks for me were as follows:

• Rull Orchard – Winnal’s Longdon 2025. 4.5%, loads of residual sugar and juicy, aromatic top notes, how is this so good already?!
• Wingfield – Gerald. A 6.6% cider blend of Dabinett, Bisquet, Cox, and Gala. East meets West, with a great name for a cider.
• Wild West – Perry. 4.5%, their first ever perry, what an honour to try this early season blend of Winnal’s Longdon, Thorn, and Judge Amphlett.
• Glean – Cider 2023. A new producer to me, although they’ve been around a few years it seems. A hearty, tannic, Autumnal cider I look forward to revisting.
• Ross Cider – Red Longdon 2025. The first time I’ve seen this in 750ml bottle from Albert, juicy and soft tannins abound. Let’s get all 4 Longdon’s more widely appreciated!

Anna’s London Cider Salon Adventures

It was a pleasure to attend the fourth annual London Cider Sauna. As much as I wish the dominant aroma from the afternoon weren’t my own sweat, humidity aside, the Tate Modern setting does an excellent job at proving that great cider can slot into its right place alongside other beautiful and well-made things. If I’m making this sound irritatingly simple, I feel that’s at least in part because Fine Cider, the company behind this event at the Tate Modern, makes the framing of cider as liquid art feel utterly intuitive.

And no, it’s not ‘the kind of art my four-year-old could do’. While I had a lot of fun overhearing someone in the queue for the loos declare the salon’s offerings ‘some of the tastiest drinks I’ve ever had in my life — and some of the eggiest’ the cider I tried was painstakingly clean; I didn’t detect a single one of the faults that put me off natural cider for years.

Rull Orchard’s Yarlington Mill and Dabinett melon-like pet nat is the only cider I’ve ever wished I could scarpetta the dregs off with a little piece of bread and eat them. Like you’re in one of those magical restaurants that can make an apparently simple pasta sauce you could never make quite right at home. So much mellow body and olive oil with fatty, bitter bubbles. I felt like I should lick my fingers too.

Sobremesa proved equally thrilling. Their Brith Mawr single-variety was a beautiful juxtaposition of sour apple brightness and sweet, underlying prickle. However, geopolitical wrinkle emerged: they are only the second producer to be granted the Welsh PGI for cider, meaning their exceptional Foxwhelp cannot officially count under the designation, simply because the fruit they use is grown just across the border. They’ve thought about turning to Frederick’s to tinker with what a Welsh apple answer to this fan favourite variety might be, though fruit availability remains too tight for this to be realistic.

I think I would have liked Wild West cider even if their maker hadn’t been wearing a black cowboy hat selected for him via Instagram poll, but his commitment to democracy and to the bit sure helped. Their Foxwhelp single-variety gains a place in my personal Foxwhelp pantheon alongside Sobremesa’s SV at last year’s London Cider Salon and Rull’s tamed lightning bolt of Foxwhelp and Discovery. It’s a disarmingly sweet-and-sour rhubarb and cherry-melon on a stick, or an ethereal blossom honey that could become one of the bees, escape the hive and fly away.

If you’ve ever lingered among pome trees and you’re fond of a drink, you might catch yourself wishing you could cut out the apple and pear middleman and drink a glass of the orchard straight. Sure, one route to that could be a single-orchard blend, although (delicious Wilding’s) Burlands blend put me more in mind of the stable. Another way in could be something stronger. I only got into cider once Capreolus‘ 1000 Apple Trees eau de vie showed me what orchards were made of, and what they could make in turn. But I’ll always be extra biased on this one even if it deserves every superlative it gets, so I turn to the eaux I haven’t tried before.

The raspberry edition was so concentrated that you almost want to call the referee and ask if this magician is playing by the same rules as the rest of us. It’s raspberry on performance enhancing drugs that are revealed to be more raspberry, then more, and more. Totally natural and even legal. When I taste it, it surprises me again, pulsing with aniseed depth. I would be even more flummoxed if I didn’t know there was over 30kg of fruit a litre in this. It feels like the nose is flesh and the liquid is bone.

Little Pomona has just brought out gorgeous labels for new releases Cuvée Pomme, Fausset, and their Broome Farm Major with a chicly nostalgic illustrated style bringing back memories of children’s classic Each Peach Pear Plum. The Cuvée Pomme, the latest outing of consistent LP showstopper apple Egremont Russet, the nutcrackered kernel in its still form toasts up nicely in its time on the lees. The bottle copy crowns it ‘the most noble apple variety’, a bit of magnificent back-label braggadocio that I’d love to see more of. I’m ready for an asynchronous version of Cider Voice’s deeply authoritative Pomes Championship where apples, pears and wild cards slug it out bottle by bottle.

Meanwhile, Little Pomona’s Fausset perry delivers the most intensely floral, melon and blossom aroma of the entire salon. Despite all this treasure I’m hit with FOMO when I realise I forgot to try the second iteration of their knockout pommeau. If you see it, give in to the peer pressure of a name and accept the good folks at LP know what’s best for you.

I sometimes wish blind tasting as an area would lean harder into pretension and mystery and revelation. Or maybe what I really specifically want is for every cider and perry tasting to feature a Secret Quince hidden in the lineup. Find & Foster’s Downstream traditional method offers this opportunity even if you show them the bottle first, its only ambiguous tipoff the subtle yellow streak on its label. I can’t say I’d have known, being more struck by its pleasingly austere seaside minerality.

Then their Pet Project pet nat, named by IG, felt like stepping into an alternate timeline. With its unapologetic, pink-and-orange palm tree tiger wallpaper or pyjama-esque design poured straight into its peachy pink bubbles, it feels like a liquid manifestation of the world millennials believe they’d be living in if they were the dominant generation already. It feels like the slightly scarily optimistic friend who clues you in that their secret to a great life is staying delusional. They’re so charismatic this statement rings true like revelation. Absolute banger from a maker at the top of their game.

Brett’s London Cider Salon Breakthrough

For me the salon this year stood out as arguably the best yet. There have maybe been in previous years more auspicious or more established line-ups of producers, but this year the consistency and quality across the board was something really special. Combined with a lot of fresh faces in the crowd, this year really had a buzz to it. Sam Leech of Wilding also commented to me that everyone’s knowledge was really high this year, giving the feeling that this might be a watershed moment of sorts. On a personal note, this year, unlike previous years, I actually managed to take lots of photos and a series of comprehensive notes rather than devolving from handwritten notes, to phone app notes, to audio notes, to dear god I hope I can remember all of this. I definitely didn’t, in a moment of complete ineptitude, leave half my notes behind at the end of the afternoon (Thank you Felix and Aga for holding on to them). I can only imagine somebody trying to decipher my badly scrawled notes which look akin to having a McConaughey like drawl transcribed through a jittery caffeine inflected cursive. That they kept them aside at all is a miracle and as a result have something to contribute here.

Luckily, I was also invited along to the trade tasting the next day, that at the time was going to act as my Plan B. A slightly more stripped back afternoon in terms of producers but bolstered by the presence of a number of amazing cheese makers and the mighty Neal’s Yard Dairy, a long-time foil of The Fine Cider Company. I was hoping to make it round to a few producers that I’d missed having tried to be as strategic as possible with my time the day before, something that paid off with a few and failed with others given them not returning for Day 2. One area I did reap rewards in however was a slightly augmented line-up from several producers, so I dipped back in at their tables accordingly. My wife Karina being Cheese Maven and Westcombe dairy alumni accompanied me round for the trade tasting, something that was thankfully a longer and more laidback afternoon. As ever three hours and (I think?) four more producers than last year leads to mild anxiety of the ticking clock in your head as you work your way round the regular salon, a clock that sadly you’ll never win against. 

So, to the highlights then! I’ll treat both days as one, unless there’s a detail important enough to delineate between the salon and the trade tastings.

As my fellow CR contributors had already gathered at Find & Foster‘s table it seemed like the logical place to start. A swift team photo and straight into it. Pet Project, a brand-new bottle, just labelled last week, that as promised delivers heaps of fresh apricots on the palate but also a wonderful smoky black tea undercurrent. The new vintage of Kingston Black & Browns outshines its predecessor in every way which given the last vintage is no mean feat. We’re talking Godfather II level follow ups, instant classic status. Extra Brut provides contrast with delicate magic acid teasing the back of the mouth, ethereal tannins and the lingering hint of pineapple.

Sobremesa starts with Brith Mawr a unique single variety, toasty, baked apple just starting to scorch, fresh lime zest and a big whack of umami. I loved this when I tried it last year, although I think I wrongly attributed it to their Cadwalder SV in last year’s round up, so it’s good to set the record straight. The Kingston Black ’24 is the first cider I’ve tried with notes of dairy milk chocolate alongside the usual KB tasting notes. The Foxwhelp SV is the standout here though, a pretty much perfectly rounded Foxwhelp, I’ve long been a fan of Tom Oliver’s Foxwhelp, something I’ve described elsewhere as having acid as bracing as a toaster in the bath and is admittedly a love it or hate it bottle, this however balances the acid with the fruit and the tannins into something that will have you re-evaluating it as a single variety, a stunningly masterful achievement.

Ross-on-Wye had one of their strongest line-ups I’ve had outside of RossFest. The Thorn perry tastes like the tannins have been reading 50 Shades of Grey and have discovered new ways to grip your tongue into submission. The Red Longdon doubles down on that and throws the book away whilst adding ginger lychee & sherbet to the mix. Upright Styre, a variety I’d never tried before was lashings of gooseberry acid, stone fruit and herbaceous mint, making this maybe the most seasonally appropriate cider of the day. The trade tasting also added a keg of Birdbarker to the mix, whilst being on the more commercial end of the Ross spectrum, it’s maybe the cider that was most welcome given the heat of the day. If I could have managed the time out to have a pint of it with Albert, then I absolutely would have.

Rawlins Chisel Jersey was the cider version of the intro to Apocalypse Now! A swirling, heady, trippy mix of fruit and sugars before the tannins sweep along the tongue like a wave of napalm clearing everything that came before, something that could be overkill but is actually only the beginning of the ride. The Keeved Browns was equally heady but this time with the scent of toasted vanilla, sweet and balanced rather than perfumed or overwhelming.

Rull Orchard’s Winnal’s Longdon SV was a big, assured perry among reasonably few perries on show this year. The huge nose of calvados like spirit being extremely memorable and one I can’t wait to revisit. Their Yarlington Mill/Dabinett worked in a similar vein to Find & Foster’s Kingston Black & Browns, showcasing two great cider apples working flawlessly together in sweet crowd-pleasing Lennon & McCartney heights of partnership.

A revelation once again from Naughton, the traditional method Stoke Red a wonderful interplay of mousse, acid and fruit character, but with tannins that are usually so hard to balance in a trad method making great support here. A trad method that I can imagine going gloriously with big meals not just being consigned to the role of aperitif.

Cheddar On My Mind is a perennial favourite of mine from Tom Oliver, so I’m always excited when a new iteration appears, even more so during the trade tasting where there’s plenty of cheddar to pair with it. The fourth iteration returns to the sweeter side of things after number three’s drier take. To my amazement on the nose are hints of cave and the cloth that binds cheddar – evocative beyond belief. A third iteration of Nuttiness & Whizz does unironically give a little creamy nuttiness upfront but settles into a sensation like chasing a big orange zesty negroni with fizzy cola bottles.

Fausset from Little Pomona is the perfect drink for the summer: elderflower champagne-like but for people who claim they don’t like elderflower, fragrant and just a joy. The Future is Yellow is pure expression of quince unlike anything else. As you’re drinking it, it feels just like opening a box of fresh ripe quinces, redolent of times as a junior chef working with them, you can feel what it’s like to rub the skin with your fingers, to peel into the flesh and have the perfume of the fruit hit you, to have the sugars linger on your hands, all within a taste. A pure Proustian moment in a glass.

I’m aware qwelch isn’t a word, but that’s exactly how Wilding’s new vintage of Major/Minor tasted,  it was qwelchy; like the sensation of jumping up and down in wellies in a muddy orchard, the smell of the rain and the fruit in the air, the tannins meanwhile having absconded to a tapas bar somewhere and picked up manzanilla salinity through osmosis. Moorcroft comes weighing in at a hefty heavyweight 10.4% that somehow still manages to float like a butterfly. Aromas of pear and quince go toe to toe with dark orange marmalade cake and a spicy ginger note that defines a lot of Wilding perries for me, all brought together by a subtle petrolic Reisling undertone. Beguiling and unique. 

After ‘forgetting’ to bring it last year I was ecstatic to see that Monsieur Bordelet had brought Cormé with him, this being the ’23 vintage and once again a completely unique drink. Imagine eating fruit cake and sipping cider in a hedgerow, combined with that perfect moment of a creme brûlée where the caramel is the perfect interplay of bitter & sweet in perfect harmony. 

There were many, many other highlights, but I feel I should probably leave some column space for my compatriots as I’m presently showing no signs of stopping writing. Thank you to Jack for letting me jump onboard for a second year in a row, and it was a pleasure to have finally met Anna & Joe, hopefully not for the last time. A big thank you once again to Aga & Felix, and also Emma & Theo for steering the salon and the good ship Fine Cider. It’s been joyous as ever and here’s to next year!

Joe’s London Cider Salon Journey

The cider salons are invariably a highlight of my year. For a few glorious hours I can immerse myself utterly in the craft and dedication of an ever-stellar lineup of cider artisans. London 2026 was no exception, migrating to the Blavatnik building on the opposite side of the Tate Modern. A more brooding space than the bright, Thames-front panorama of 2025, but one just as striking into which to project the sleek modern face of fine cider, and mercifully free from last year’s greenhouse effect.

I hit the ground running with Devon’s Find & Foster. Downstream caught my attention early, a Méthode Traditionnelle orchard blend with a touch of quince (unrecorded but secretly marked by a yellow strip on the label) – crisp balanced acid, gentle tannin, and a whisper of the honeyed perfume that quince brings to the party. Next, I blow my palate out early with their ice cider, Plink. Had it before, had it then, will be having again, please and thank you. A superb addition to the UK’s growing line-up of ice ciders, with an addictive depth of leather and spice underpinning a harmonious interplay of fresh red apple tartness versus rich caramelised apple.

I seek out the first newcomer on my list, Glean. Named for their search for apples that might otherwise be left, unloved, in orchards across Devon á la Find & Foster, they also echo Artistraw with sustainable, eco-friendly practises throughout their production pipeline. At this point, my careful plan of attack goes out the window as the salon gets ever busier and I lurch into the nearest available parking space with Vagrant. Besides a shameless opportunity to get my copy of A Vagrant’s Pomona signed, Longarm Mr Bones jumps out at me. Great name, great label, great liquid. Bright citrussy acid, earthy tannin, and a whack of tongue binding astringency from the crab apples. One for a big hunk of pork terrine and some Cornish Yarg.

I was also delighted to try Aaron Burr from New York for the first time, having brought my copy of Uncultivated to be signed. A seamless transition from reading about their terroir-driven series Locational on the train down from Birmingham, to tasting one from that very line, Sullivan County, marketed to my tastes with a whacking great geological map across the label. Yet it was their Bachanac which stuck in my mind. Crab apple fermented with grapes offered up a mellow acetic profile, evoking something Asturian, before pushing me face first into a hedgerow, palate full of gooseberry and blackcurrant notes and tangled up in the tannic briar of the crab apples.

Things continue to be all about the crabs with a short hop left for Bauman’s. The glittering array of medals and trophies on the stand sets out their towering reputation and the bottles deliver accordingly. A mosquito-in-amber label design again tickles my interests. A crate of their Amber is clearing customs and will arrive on the Fine Cider website shortly. Made from Crimson red crab apples and Muscat de Lens harvested in Montana rather than Bauman’s native Oregon, the crab apple component was additionally fermented in amphorae. Bauman’s is one of only a few producers in the world who have imported this icon of Georgian wine-making tradition into cider making and this is my first time tasting it in cider. Could I pinpoint its influence objectively? No. Did confirmation bias introduce a cool, clayey minerality to offset the restrained peach, apricot and honeyed notes of the liquid? Perhaps. Regardless, I will snag a few bottles from Fine Cider soon enough.

And Now For Something Completely Different. Capreolus stands out for the staggering statistics behind its bottles. They are the kind of blurb you get on the back of an Innocent Smoothie bottle – three apples, half a kiwi and a third of a banana – but taken into the realm of extraordinary, pub quiz factoid. All the gold mined in human history would fit into just three-and-a-half Olympic swimming tools and similarly bonkers quantities of fruit are distilled into minute, but delightfully heady measures from Capreolus. I invest a solid 15 minutes of precious salon time into tasting their offerings. The quince and perry pear spirits scored highest for me, summoning their essences in a boozy séance.

Like my time at the salon, I risk trying to cram in more producers than word count here will allow. Thankfully, the Bristol Cider Salon in August will offer me a second bite of the apple. Several producers later (including new maker Pom – delicious), I am greeted by Lovecraftian kelp tentacles hanging from the walls and swaying lazily in bottles with Aberdeenshire’s Seidear. I had tried their seaweed cider at the Bristol salon a few years back and was keen to refresh my memory. Not a hedgerow this time, but instead the salinity and tang of standing neck deep in the North Sea, turning towards an oncoming wave and opening your mouth wide. Avant garde, but any lover of dirty martinis will get on well with this bottle.

Cheese break! No notes here, Neil’s Yard know what they are doing and a sorely needed palate reset before heading back down to Somerset. I saved my last nibble of cheddar to clock back in with a favourite from the Bristol Salon last year, Rull’s Orchard’s YabDab. Yarlington lushness elevates to still greater heights when given a suitable dancing partner, Dabinett in this case, but the general formula shines elsewhere, for example in Oliver’s Yarlington where a dash of Foxwhelp often features.

The mad rush continues. Without the printed itinerary of producers and bottles which previous salons have provided, I have lost track of time and plot. The dying minutes of the salon blur by. The Fine Cider Company table, the antithesis of passing Go in Monopoly and collecting £200, is the final hurdle and I fall thoroughly afoul. My wallet takes a beating, and I stumble away with a gently clinking tote bag. I cannot wait to do it all over again.