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 varietys can’t coexist with small, artisanal producers, and some of the big companies are better at doing big makes 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 moment with the head cidermaker Bob Cork, who fed me plenty of seriously technical info 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 additionally 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.