Tillington Hills Premium Cider from the Co-op
This little number is courtesy of the co-op believe it or not. They tag it as a "premium cider" which is always a little worrying, but other than that and the frankly unncessary union flag on the bottle, this was actually a rather good little cider.
The bottle is nothing fancy, black label and screwtop with a blurry stock photo of an oprchard. The nice thing about it for a dedicated pisshead cider connoisseur like me is that it contains a generous 750ml helping. The bottle tells me that co-op farms have been growing fruit since 1846 and that they use some nice apples in their cider — Tillington Ladies Finger, Bulmers Norman, Yarlington Mill and Nottingham Colnel.
They filter the cider to sort out its acidity and to clarify it. I’m quite a fan of cloudy ciders, but they’ve done a pretty good job here. The colour is a mid orange, with a very thin, light head. Once settled the cider is very clear, and very still.
Tillington Hills cider is a reasonable 6%, not likely to break you quite as soon as some of the 8% scrumpies, but worth approaching with a reasonable degree of caution if you're more of a ale drinker.
It smelled oaky and slightly towards the rotten fruit end (in a good way though) the taste is ripe, a little sharp, mellowing to a slight tannin at the end. Its had a wonderful acidity — so perhaps the filtration worked as intended. A light bodied cider and extremely drinkable. I reckon the co-op have done themselves proud. OK, this isn’t going to compete with a proper cider from a farm in Somerset, but for a mass produced supermarket tipple it ain’t half bad.
2013-01-03 by Charlie Harvey