So why is this the best Halloween event to hang-out at this year?  Well, we’ve laid on all the perfect ingredients for the perfect night out – real cider, hog roast, foot-tapping dancing music, halloween fancy dress (optional – but why not when you can win a case of cider for the best dressed halloweener!?) and a great location!

A dozen traditionally made real craft ciders from small artisan producers sourced by Fetch The Drinks.

Amazing cider drinking and dancing music from the Mother Ukers!  The Mother Ukers are ‘The Ukulele Band’ who unleash the power of their humble little four string ukes and guarantee to tickle your ears, kiss your soul & get them feet a tapping!

Yummy hog roast from foodie legend Carl at The Perfect Pig

£5 per ticket – book on-line through the Shelley Theatre website.

 

Fetch Cider Club is an exclusive on-line real cider members club.  With a monthly subscription of only £39.00 (including free delivery!) Fetch Cider Club members receive a MONTHLY mixed case of 12 x bottles (500 or 330 ml) of traditional craft cider or perry.

We have just despatched our first ever mixed selection box to our members!   This month’s carefully selected cider and perry included (from left to right on the photo)

Cotswold Cider Company No Brainer

New Forest Cider Kingston Black

Millwhites Rum Cask

Burrow Hill Perry

Millwhites Scrumpy

Ciderniks Yellow Sun

Celtic Marches Lily The Pink

Celtic Marches Slack Alice

Dorset Nectar Jurassic Skyline

Sandford Orchard Bumbleberry

Pilton Keeved

Millwhites Hedge Layer

Don’t worry if you’ve missed out this time – sign up as a member here to get your exclusive case next month!

Or we have plenty of other options of getting cider from the orchard to your doorstep!

• Build your own case picking out your favourite styles or producers,
• Select a mixed case by county
• Or just buy your favourite cider by the case or Bag in Box (35 pints).

 

 

We have just come back from a flying visit to the West Country, catching up with our wonderful producers and collecting more delicious ciders on our first trip of the Autumn – and Wilbur, our 6 month old bundle of Labrador fun, came too!

After some heavy traffic and a very inquisitive Wilbur, the first stop was Ciderniks in the picturesque village of Kintbury in West Berkshire.

Here we loaded up with delicious Ciderniks Coombe Raider (6.5%, light & dry) and Kingston Black (6.5% with a distinctly nutty flavour, single varietal cider – 1st place 2015 CAMRA South of England award winner). Wilbur was very taken by the exciting smells of the Kintbury pavements and the Ciderniks beagle!

Next stop was Beard and Sabre in Cirencester, Gloucestershire.

This was a trip down memory lane for us as we used to live just outside Cirencester many years ago. This says a lot about us as I wanted to visit the church where our middle son had been baptised and Sean wanted to revisit the rugby club! Needless to say a lack of time and lots of new developments on the Cirencester roundabouts prevented either happening! Anyway, back to the cider. Beard and Sabre produce some truly wonderful ciders pressed traditionally by rack and cloth. Today saw us collect Berry Master (4% medium with hints of strawberry and raspberry) and Black Beard, what a wonderful name, (4% medium dark fruit cider with blackcurrant).

On into Somerset, we stopped off at Broadoak Cider to stock up on some tasty Perry (7.5% sweet, refreshing glorious pear) before driving through spectacular countryside and challenging lanes (!) to get to Nempnetts Cider in the village of Nempnett Thrubwell near Bristol where they’re based on a pig farm. Can you imagine Wilbur’s excitement?! What smells, noise and squelchy mud to get stuck into. Here we stocked up on some lovely boxes of Piglets Choice (7% single variety oak-matured) and Piglets Perry (7% cloudy straw colour with wonderful floral pear aroma).

Back on the road now complete with smelly but very happy dog, we headed for Wilkins Cider in Mudgley, near Wedmore. Here Roger Wilkins has spent his life dairy farming whilst also finding time to produce award-winning traditional ciders which we saw being pressed. A warm welcome and a glass of cider always awaits you here. Well worth a visit if you find yourself down on the Somerset Levels. Unfortunately time was against us so no loitering or drinking permitted. Dry, medium and sweet Traditional Farmhouse Cider were all loaded up and we were off again!

Next stop, Burrow Hill Cider overlooking the Somerset Levels where the farm has been pressing apples for more than 150 years. They also have their own distillery where they produce Somerset Cider Brandy, very popular with some of our clients. Having taken Traditional Cider (6% dry, medium-dry and medium) on board we headed off to Street, near Glastonbury, to catch up with Hecks Cider (where on our last visit we bumped into David Cameron and George Osbourne!  Maybe as they are both looking for jobs they should now consider producing cider!).

The Hecks family have been making Traditional Farmhouse Somerset Cider for six generations since 1841. Here we collected dry, medium and sweet ciders fermented in oak barrels and Farmhouse Perry (6.5% fragrant and fruity).

Then on to our last producer of the day and we had finally made it into Devon – Green Valley Cider located on the outskirts of Exeter where we stocked up with Rum Tiddly Um Tum, Vintage (8.3% medium dry) Strawberry (4%) and Dragon Tears (4.7% dry sparkling).

We rewarded ourselves with one last stop where we popped into the opening night of the new Stable in Exeter and sat on the fabulous roof terrace and obviously tried some superb real cider recently delivered by Fetch The Drinks of course! Wilbur just tried to eat the plants.

We finally made it home at about 11 pm and were just about still on speaking terms with Wilbur who was still full of energy and in his best and most destructive mode! At least the cider was safely stored away in the back!!

Having attended the event as customers for the past few years, The Great Dorset Steam Fair had always been a distant dream for the Fetch The Drinks team. However, this year it became reality, with only two months to go until the event we finally got the call, we were in! The Dorset Steam Fair would have a Dorset Cider Bar for the very first time. Although we hold nothing against the previous and current cider bars at the show and have always been great fans of the Burrow Hill Cider Bus, we and now the organisers could not go another year without the County’s finest produce on offer at the County’s finest Show. Read More…

Now the Ashes are back where they belong, the Pub & Bar magazine have put their own averages together to analyse the consistently improving performance of Cider.

The data was collated by Cardinal, collecting opinions and data from customers, to create The Cider Report. Unlike many drinks, cider has an even split between men and women drinkers, displaying its diversity and Broad appeal. It is also interesting to note that the younger drinking age bracket have drunk the least amount of cider, perhaps displaying a reluctance to try something new or a lack of education in the expanding market. The middle bracket on the other hand are more likely to choose a premium product and are therefore not put off by a higher price or an unknown product. However, it does display an encouraging progression for cider and a willingness for the product in each category.

In the second graphic a clearer breakdown of what type of cider is being consumed by each sex is displayed. The Roooooot of the findings point towards an even spread of cider drinkers between men and women, however pear and flavoured varieties are extremely more popular with women with men sticking to the traditional forms. “One of the key growth drivers we have observed is the heightened demand for flavoured cider,” points out Kathryn Purchase, director of customer marketing at Carlsberg UK. “Consumers are increasingly discerning and are keen to trial new and interesting flavour profiles,” especially the women according to the research. The style of delivery also differs between the sexes, with men preferring the draught option and women strongly favouring the bottle. suggesting that women are more likely to chose a product based on appearance and quality of  branding where as men may trust the look of a product due to its position on a bar hand pump.

 

Thanks to Pub and Bar for collating the information and producing such aesthetic designs, we hope our readers enjoy your findings as much as we have! For more info visit them at http://pubandbar.com/.

 

It is no secret that the craft and flavoured cider market is on the up, the growth and depth of product is unrivalled by any other in the industry which is now representative of its stature on taps and in the fridges of all the best bars in town. Martin Wolstencroft (Arc Inspirations) describes the current state of flavoured cider as an ‘explosion’ in the market, it must now be considered as a permanent feature on any bar. At Fetch The Drinks, sales at a show, on-line or wholesale, it is the flavoured and innovative products that are proving the most popular. At the recent Dorset Chilli Festival, Martin’s ‘Lulworth Skipper Chili Cider’ proved extremely popular and flew out of the tap while Dorset Nectar’s Passion Fruit variety has been a massive hit at cider festivals all over the country. It is the intrigue and bewilderment from the customer “surely not”, that catches their attention, but yes we can confirm chilli and garlic cider (Orchard Pig, Maverick) does work and tastes fantastic.

Outside of the innovative range of cider products which is giving the market such a boom, the daring and adventurous taste of the drinker is also expanding and generating more followers than ever before. Jayson Perfect (Palmers tenanted trade director) has noted a variety of age groups now enjoying and experimenting with a range of different ciders. From your traditional dry cider drinker to your “I don’t drink cider” non-cider drinker, everybody is getting involved, they love the story, the development and the craftsmanship of each individual product. Many bars, including Wolstencroft’s, will now stock three to four flavoured, one mainstream and a classic/craft cider, due to its new found popularity.

Ciders diversity is also giving it the edge. Pubs and bars are always looking at ways to accommodate cider, not just as a drink but as a fine accompaniment with food, taking advantage of its full and extensive range of flavours. Furthermore, cooking with cider can also be a fantastic way to juice up your dish and give you the press on any competitors or just to try something different in your own kitchen.

Last week was the Great British Beer Festival, it is a fantastically well run event and this year was no different. What is exciting and notable though is the growing prominence and popularity of the cider bars. Seeing first hand the number of cider drinkers and the extensive range of ciders on offer was an extremely pleasing for cider lovers such as ourselves. Customers knowledge of cider has increased dramatically over the last ten years, which is where the demand for such a varied range of products has come from. Perfect believes that holding dedicated cider events can ‘develop customer interest in the category’, therefore cider becoming an increasingly important feature at beer festivals.

 

This Halloween, from the very house that brought you Frankenstein, Fetch The Drinks has again teamed up with The Shelley Theatre to bring you the second coming of Cider Fex.

So join us for some haunted fun with fetchthedrinks.com for an evening of ghoulish cider tasting with traditionally made award winning craft ciders plus live music from nationally touring band The Waletones. Food by The Perfect Pig Hog Roast. Admission gives you entry to the event plus a free cider sample. Fancy dress optional!

Inspired by Sixties icons The Beach Boys, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, and most obviously The Beatles, The Waletones have captured an essence of The Cavern’s Mersey Beat era, thrown in a little Brit-Pop for childhood nostalgia and topped it with a dusting of noughties indie rock.

Get your tickets from the Shelley Theatre website to avoid disappointment – https://shelleytheatre.admit-one.eu/?p=details&eventCode=20087

 

Throwing a party, the family are coming round for a BBQ or just getting your supplies in for the summer holidays?

Fetch The Drinks have the answer. We are extremely excited to now be able to offer 20 litre bag in box cider on our website. Each box contains 38 pints of fantastic British cider from a range of different produces, from Dorset to Somerset, Devon to Hampshire and Scotland to Wales. Whatever cider related problem you have, Fetch The Drinks have the answer.

So whether it is dry, medium, sweet, flavoured or fruity we have the solution here on our website, just search for your favourite ciders and order directly to your home.

We are sure you will enjoy this new facility and hope you are as passionate about these unique artisan products as the team are here.

Cheers and happy drinking!

Summer, Cider, Cricket. The great traditions of our British nation. All going hand in hand and in no bigger way than the start of the Ashes this summer. At 11am on the 8th of July at The Swalec Stadium, Cardiff, the first ball of the 2015 Ashes will be bowled, and the first sip of Cider will be drunk in what promises to be an enthralling series.

A devastating and ruthless Australian side return to English soil to retain the Urn they won so comprehensively in their 5-0 drubbing in 2013/14. However, England with their new Australian coach and their side too finding their feet and swagger will hope to bounce back with the support of the Barmy Army.

Batsmen will come and go, bowlers will live and die by the sword, one nation will bask in glory while another will be left dejected. However, with your opening partner, and personal choice of real cider the ride will be smooth and enjoyable, a blistering century or 5 wicket haul will always conclude with your most trustee of companions until the next mornings play.

Cricket, with its lunch and tea intervals, all-day action and gentle pace is a sport that lends itself kindly to the British public and the cider drinker. An opportunity to enjoy the easy drinking and refreshing taste of real cider throughout the day is a thought that provides as much excitement as the cricket itself.

Come on England, give us something to celebrate, otherwise it will be a long summer drowning our sorrows.