Joe McNamee: Why we should savour the flavour of a fine Irish cider this autumn
Cork's Stonewell Cider
I wrote a few weeks ago of autumn and its harvest bounty, including a brief mention of apples.
To be honest, the entire column could have been devoted to apples in autumn, possibly the quintessential symbol of a bountiful harvest, a fruit that keeps on giving right the way through the deepest, darkest depths of winter and well on into the following spring, if properly stored.
But I never mentioned that other great autumnal tradition, pressing freshly harvested apples to make real cider and I have very fond memories of helping an old friend to do so many years ago and even better memories of drinking the finished product.
In my youth we drank dirty black porter but as soon as the sun shone, we switched to cider and if we were lucky enough to hit a heatwave, we drank it until our stomachs groaned. (The concept of perhaps not drinking was still a novel notion.)
While we made valiant efforts, it cannot have been entirely down to the herculean imbibing of myself and my comrades that Ireland is the number one consumer of cider in the EU, followed by Spain and then France. (Britain remains the world’s largest cider market but is no longer a member of the EU.)
But, for all that we drank, not a drop of it would be entitled to call itself ‘cider’ if it were on sale in Spain and France, where, to be sold as cider, the beverage must entirely comprise the fermented juice of freshly pressed apples.
A recent article in Forbes on the lack of an EU-wide labelling system for cider is highly illuminating, showing that, for the most part, cider produced at an industrial scale in Europe does not consist of 100% fermented freshly pressed apple juice.
Rather, it is made up of apple concentrate, rarely more than 35%, supplemented by sugar syrup, water, flavourings, preservatives and colourings. (I asked representatives of an Irish industrial-scale cider maker for a list of ingredients of their product but, at time of going to press, have yet to receive a reply.)
These days, I can really tell the difference, an education greatly enhanced in recent years by the revival of the premium Irish craft cider sector, reviving an old, even ancient tradition that saw cider as the Irish equivalent of ‘wine’.
Neither do I binge on the stuff, preferring instead to savour a bottle, maybe two, as I would a fine wine, especially a bottle of the enormously talented Mark Jenkinson’s Cockagee, a truly sublime and world-class keeved cider, a process where fermentation is halted early to leave residual fruit sugars, yielding a sweet, sparkling nectar with real body and true complexity of flavour.
I’m also a huge fan of Cork-based Stonewell Cider whose head honcho, Daniel Emerson, only recently stepped down after four years as chairman of the AICV, the European Cider and Fruit Wine Association, an organisation that has been pushing for a more rigorous policing and labelling of what exactly constitutes real cider.
In Ireland, these superb 100% pure ciders only account for 1-2% of the overall ‘cider’ market.
The AICV is pushing for a two-tier system, clearly differentiating 100% pure juice cider makers from the infinitely lower-juice product of their industrial counterparts. Sadly, I think they’ll be fighting that battle for some time to come, but in the meantime, do seek out a wonderful taste of autumn in a glass and support small craft producers of genuinely Irish cider.
I wrote recently of the Tiger Balm Club, ex-Pigalle head chef Mark Ahern and food influencer Bryan ‘Sunshine Primo’ Rudd’s Asian-style pop-up which had a trial outing during Sounds from a Safe Harbour.
So successful was this inaugural evening that the Club has embarked on a series of similar outings, including a sold-out tie-in (November 11) with the Cork Film Festival at the Glass Curtain featuring guest chef Jerald Head from MAM NYC (in the New York Times 2025 top 100).
But before FOMO paralysis sets in entirely, I highly recommend booking for the TBC takeover (Nov 14/15) of one of my favourite Irish venues, OHK Cafe, in Kinsale, offering Thai and Viet drinking snacks, small plates and then full dishes, with a few nibbles to take away afterwards.
A set menu (€65) including welcome drink, booking is highly recommended.
The ever charming Station House Hotel with its excellent in-house Signal Restaurant, is offering a series of Midweek Departures, immersive midweek escapes combining guided afternoon workshops with delightful dining and accommodation packages.
Subjects covered include ceramics, art, gardening, farming, cooking, baking, wellness and stretching, including Christmas pudding bake-off, Christmas wreath making with former RHS Chelsea overall winner Jenny Murphy, and sourdough bread making with Chris Brownlow of Bread with Benefits.
Package includes light lunch or cream tea on arrival, workshop, three course dinner in Signal and a la carte breakfast the next day.
Speaking of apples, I reckon there’s many a child has taken a chomp out of a crabapple until to spit it right back out again, so I’ve always found to addition of sugar, cloves and cinnamon to make crabapple jelly to be some form of edible alchemy and a true seasonal treat.
A good crabapple jelly shivers delicately on the spoon but when it hits the mouth, it bursts into a swelling symphony of sweet, acidic flavour, with the spices trilling up through the scales.
Years ago, I had my own market stall alongside the family behind Watergrasshill-based Yummie Foods, and have long valued their range, and their Crabapple Jelly is quite delicious, gorgeous on buttered hot toast, exquisite stirred through natural yogurt but best of all eaten by the spoonful from the jar.
