A boozy lunch with The Ciderologist

At the strike of noon on a brilliantly sunny Saturday, the water sparkling beneath the hull of the chugging ferry, the doors of The Stable on Bristol’s harbourside are unlocked. On a table in the back corner, five half-pints of cider in a wooden rack already await each guest on The Ciderologist’s inaugural Bristol Cider Tasting Tour and one thing is for sure: we’re in for a lot of cider.

Our host is Gabe Cook, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of all things cider and perry is matched in impressiveness only by his waxed moustache. He begins by running us through his CV, which includes stints at some of the country’s biggest cider producers including Westons and Bulmers, and then quickly get down to today’s business of teaching us about the ciders we are to taste. “It’s edu-tainment!” he jokes good-naturedly.

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The flight of ciders at The Stable begins with a cider rich in heady, almost spicy tannins, and progresses through an acidic blend, a beautifully smooth oak-aged cider made by Hallets, a perry and a flavoured cider. “You make cider in the same way that you make wine,” Gabe says. “You pick apples for their qualities, you ferment them and then let the drink mature. But we don’t have a lexicon of cider like you do with wine. Almost anyone in the street could name two varieties of wine grape, but who could name even one cider apple?”

A pizza arrives at the table for the five of us to share – breakfast is beginning to feel like a long time ago – and we tuck in between careful sips of the ciders. Gabe’s tasting notes are delivered as dramatic stories with lots of accents and facial expressions: he holds the room and is endlessly passionate about his favourite subject.

The Apple is the second stop on The Ciderologist’s Bristol tour

A quick stumble through the busy Harbourside Market and past volleyball matches in Queen Square takes us to Bristol’s legendary cider boat, The Apple, where we find a bench outside amongst the casual daytime drinkers and dayglo hen parties. Gabe gets us all two halves each, including Hecks‘ Kingston Black, to demonstrate the West Country tradition of cider making using a single variety of apple. Compared to what we tried in The Stable, this has a real taster of the farmyard about it, but Gabe is a little let down. “It’s disappointingly not as rough as I was hoping it would be!” he says with a belly laugh.

With the sun out and a light breeze on the water, it’s the perfect way to be spending a Saturday. It’s testament to Gabe’s personality that he can bring a group of strangers together and allow us to completely relax within the hour, though the quantities of cider might be helping too. Gabe has been running tours like this in London for around nine months and now has a successful business alongside his work as a consultant and course leader at the Institute of Brewing and Distilling, training the next generation of cider sommeliers.

The day is rounded off by cheese at Wapping Wharf’s Bristol Cider Shop

The final part of the afternoon is a warm stroll over Prince Street Bridge to the busy food and drink mecca of Wapping Wharf, and into the tiny shipping container converted into Bristol Cider Shop by Pete Snowman. A table sits laden with three tall bottles of fine quality cider, to be paired with hunks of cheese from Rosie Morgan at The Bristol Cheesemonger, just a few doors down. We’re also joined for a chat by Andy Jenkins of Ganley & Naish, indie cider makers based near Weston-super-Mare.

The focus of this stop – not that we’re taking notes at this point, almost four pints in – is the process of making cider. The first drink we try from Pilton Cider has been fermented in the bottle using the Champagne method – known as keeving in the cider world. It’s paired with a beautiful buffalo cheese that complements the boldness of the tannins, and we happily munch through a goat’s cheese and blue cheese too as shoppers browse for a tipple to drink in the sun. After a sparkling, bottle-conditioned cider from Oliver’s, the final taste on our tongues is the amazing Burrow Hill Ice Cider – so named because it is made using frozen apples – with a flavour akin to a sweet sherry. As a demonstration of the breadth of what can be made from simple apples, it’s been a fascinating range.

As the afternoon wraps up, one of our party asks Gabe what is favourite kind of cider is. He’s framed by floor-to-ceiling bottles that fizz with different taste profiles, from the sweetest cider liquor to the roughest jug of scrumpy. “What’s my favourite cider? That’s like asking what my favourite child is,” Gabe says. It’s an impossible choice for a man who loves them all, and who inspires others with his boundless enthusiasm.

The next Bristol Cider Tasting Tour takes place on June 2 2018 and costs £40 per person. To book tickets, visit www.cidertastingtours.com/bristol