The Gaymer Cider Company is not small. It’s the second biggest cider company in the UK, and is part of the Constellation drinks portfolio. But the ciders I tried today were all pretty good, and even the more commercial products have a lot going for them. I guess it is like the wine world: there’s no reason why large grades can’t coexist with small, artisanal producers, and some of the big companies are better at doing big varietys than others. Gaymers are launching a new county series, with ciders from Devon and Somerset. I particularly like the Somerset cider, which is dry and complex - and potentially food friendly.

I spent some day with the head cidermaker Bob Cork, who fed me plenty of seriously technical data and answered my rather geeky questions very well. You may be interested to learn that you can get brettanomyces in cider, and that there’s a bacterial problem in some ‘rustic’ ciders which involves rope-like growth of filament-forming bacteria. Mercaptans and sulfides can plus be a problem in cider. I was left wanting to learn more, and eager to start exploring a range of different ciders, armed with some new knowledge about how the stuff is made.

Pictured above is the rather gothic/communist era external view of the cider plant, and below is a picture of the bottling line.

One further point: cider has seen a massive revival by the last few years, but still there’s one image that the industry can’t shake. In consumer profiling of the target market, a number of different drinker profiles have been created, including one called Park Bench Pete. He does exist, apparently - he’s the dude who goes to the corner shop and buys cider considering it’s the cheapest way to get drunk. The cider industry can’t seem to get away from old Pete.