We’ve always done this sort of thing on an ad-hoc, mentioned-in-the-article sort of basis before, but as we’ve grown a little we thought it was worth offering all necessary disclosures in a more centralised way here. (Long-term readers won’t find any surprises…)

Independence, honesty and personal preference

Cider Review is, first and foremost, a site based on independent reviews and long-form articles that reflect our honest — but inherently personal — opinions on the world of cider and perry.

Our tastes are our own, are generally worn on our sleeves, and we will always try to explain why we have liked a cider or perry more or less. By reading a number of our reviews we hope you will gradually form a picture of our own preferences and in so doing be able to compare them with your own. Cider and perry offer a broad spectrum of flavours, and our tastes are fairly broad within it. There aren’t many styles whose best exemplars you won’t find highly praised in these digital pages.

That being said, cider costs money and not all ciders are great. If a cider covered in these pages is faulty, we will always say so. If it tastes unusual, or outside our bandwidth of preference, we’ll let you know every time. 

Ultimately, anything written here is a matter of preference. There is virtually (perhaps literally) no one in the world who is expert on every style of cider and perry. None of us here pretend to be experts at all: just enthusiastic consumers with keyboards and our own sets of tastes.

Our own voice, always.

We don’t earn advertising revenue. We never post paid content. We’re not interested in regurgitating press releases because we want to share with you, the drinker, our own considered, independent opinions. We are a consumer-facing site: articles and reviews written by drinkers, for drinkers, and anything other than complete control over the content we choose to publish would compromise that.

Samples policy.

The vast majority of what we taste here we have purchased with our own hard-earned cash. But every so often a producer will get in touch with us and offer samples of cider or perry for review. Our contributors are free to accept samples, and to date we have reviewed all samples we have been sent.

With that said, we are clear at all times that free samples are no guarantee of a glowing writeup. We always disclose whenever something has been comped, and we retain full editorial control at all times. Our review, our opinion.

More rarely (once, to date) we might be invited on an expenses-paid press trip. For example, Adam’s visit to Mostviertel in September 2022. Again, this has no bearing on our independence of content and opinion. Any subsequent articles are at the discretion of our contributors and will never include content provided by producers, organisations or any other external party.

Under no circumstances do we ever solicit free samples. Anything sent is at the discretion of producers or the PR companies who represent them.

External work.

Our contributors are free to pursue other enterprises within cider and perry. Almost all of us (everyone other than Adam, so far) makes cider themselves, some on a commercial basis. We would never allow a contributor to review their own cider, and would offer full disclosure were one of us to review another’s. (For example, Adam has written about Barry’s Kertelreiter brand several times, both before and since Barry’s first contributions to Cider Review). 

To date we haven’t undertaken any consultancy work, but this isn’t something we would prohibit our contributors from engaging with. We would not, of course, allow reviews of ciders on which the writer had personally consulted.

Occasionally our contributors are invited to judge competitions and to lead talks and tastings. This is something we’re wholly open to and actively encourage, though would always disclose where relevant. For example, if we were invited by any given cidery to host a tasting of a flight of their ciders which we subsequently wrote up here.

Any questions?

Simply get in touch here, or give us a shout on one of our social media apps. We’re on twitter, instagram and facebook, and we’re usually pretty quick to reply.