Cider and cheddar

Cider and cheese are natural bedfellows.

You may have had a pint of cider with a ploughman’s but if you want to elevate the combination to another level try this.

It’s a collaboration between one of our best cider makers, Tom Oliver and Sam Wilkin aka Cellarman Sam who came up with the idea of crafting a cider to go specifically with cheddar - called, appropriately, Cheddar on my Mind.

It’s a rich fruity cider that tastes almost like a tarte tatin and is just perfect with a mature farmhouse cheddar such as Montgomery’s, Keen’s or Pitchfork - and with other cheeses as I discovered to my cost.

Tom paired it with a Teifi gouda style cheese in the second round of our Battle of the Beverages at the Abergavenny Food Festival (me on wine, Tom on cider and Pete Brown on beer) and it won hands down despite my fielding a really good Ribera del Duero, the 2108 Pradorey Crianza from Finca Valdelayegua.

He also showed it at a 'cheese and cider summit' last week - an initiative to link cider with cheese in people’s minds. I certainly don’t have a problem with that!

For other cheddar pairings click here and for other food pairings with cider here 

Smoked mackerel salad and 'ancestral' cider

Last week was mainly about cider - I went to the Cider Salon in Bristol at the weekend where I enjoyed a succession of English ciders with a five course feast prepared by Native Vine.

Although the pairings were spot on - especially a superb dish of belly pork with a fennel and peach salsa - none of them came as a surprise (which is what I try to focus on in this slot).

That honour went to a smoked mackerel potato and pickled cucumber salad I had at Café Deco in Store Street in Bloomsbury which was just brilliant with an ‘ancestral’ Spanish cider called Fuente Guijarro from Andalucia. (Interestingly the south of the country rather than the cider-obsessed north but made 2000m above sea level)

It’s basically a pet nat so the cider was cloudy and slightly funky but not to the extent that it overwhelmed the pure apple flavour which was the element that went so well with the smoked fish, sweet-pickled cucumber and pea shoots which were part of the salad too.

There was another salad on the table - made from green bean, basil and parmesan - which also worked really well.

Cider, even artisan cider like this, tends to be a cheaper option than wine so is definitely worth exploring if you find it on a drinks menu.

You can buy the Fuente Guijarro ancestral for £15 from Native Vine in Bristol and from Crouch End Cellars in north London for £16.

For other cider pairings see my Top Food Pairings for Cider.

Roast chicken and ‘Saison’ cider

Even though we might enjoy a glass of cider down the pub it’s not often, I suspect, we open a bottle for friends but given the number of interesting ciders around and the fact they’re bottled in full-size sharing bottles we really should.

I took along this bottle of Find & Foster’s Saison Pomme which is made in the rich saison beer style out of Devon apples when I heard my mate Kate was cooking roast chicken and it went perfectly.

Find & Foster specialise in making ciders from ‘forgotten’ orchards and in a natural wine style. The name Saison, they explain, “refers to the seasonal farmhouse ale brewed by farmers to quench the thirst of their workers during the harvest. Historically iit underwent a long slow fermentation fuelled by yeasts that were native to the farm.”

This version too is made with wild yeasts and unfiltered which gave it a slightly cloudy appearance and preserves its deep apple flavour.

It would be great with roast or grilled pork or a good cheddar too.

You can buy it for £9.40 from Native Vine, £9.95 from wineandgreene.com and £12.95 from Hop, Burns & Black though at some of these it appears to be temporarily out of stock.

See also 8 great wine (and other) matches for roast chicken

The photo above isn't of Kate’s chicken as we were eating outside by candlelight and it was too dark to get a shot!

Pheasant terrine with Kings vintage cider

Pubs brewing their own beer has become quite commonplace but few make their own cider. Not that you’d expect anything less of The Crown at Woolhope which was nominated Cider Pub of the Year Pub three times recently at the the Great British Pub Awards in 2015, 2017 and 2018.

Owner Matt Slocombe, also happens to be a chef who used to run cider producer Weston’s restaurant Scrumpy House and has worked a great deal with cider over the years so it’s no surprise either that the food is perfectly attuned to it.

My favourite pairing at dinner at the weekend was this richly flavoured pheasant terrine which was served with gooseberry and sage and a quince and ginger chutney. He suggested we drank their full-bodied (7.3%) Kings Fine Vintage cider with it and it was spot on. It also went really well with my main course of pork belly with caramelised apple and quince as did Tom Oliver’s deeply flavoured Gold Rush no. 7, a collaboration with Ryan Burk of Angry Orchard in New York.

It’s great to be able to drink locally made drinks with locally sourced food like this. You’d be mad to drink anything but cider (and perry) in Herefordshire!

For other cider pairings see Top Food Pairings for Cider

I ate at The Crown as a guest of the restaurant.