What is everyone talking about this weekend: Is cider the new black?
Cider — more specifically, fine cider — is making waves on the British dining scene following a bumper apple harvest in 2025. Could cider tasting menus soon replace those for wine?
London’s cognoscenti gathered at Notting Hill's The Fat Badger last Friday to drink not wine, nor Martinis, but Showerings fine cider. It seems an odd idea: a drink usually associated with picnics or pub gardens suddenly being paired with tagliolini or whatever trendy dish Londoners are serving nowadays. Nick Showering, whose family has been making cider in Shepton Mallet for nearly 200 years, is ebullient about his product’s ascending fortunes. Only last week, the brand went live in 490 Tesco stores at a price point nearly double that of supermarket staples such as Aspall. ‘It shows an appetite for fine cider,’ Nick says, ‘even among those who previously wouldn’t have known about it.’
Nick Showering manages his family firm in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, where they have been making cider for nearly 200 years.
Where to try fine cider?
The London Cider Salon will take place at Tate Modern on May 24, 2026. For it, the Fine Cider Company will team up with Neal's Yard, showcasing a range fine ciders from the West Country and beyond.
The Fine Cider Company recently opened its first shop at 399, Mentmore Terrace, London Fields, where it spotlights small, independent producers and is open to the public every Saturday from 12 noon to 6pm.
Tastings at the shop are available to book on Saturdays (6:30pm–8:00pm).
Fine cider — made from 100% fermented apple juice — is different to the stuff we are used to drinking as a casual, afterwork tipple. It boasts a more complex flavour; perhaps a more acquired taste. When Clare Smyth, Britain’s only three-Michelin-starred female chef, cooked a gourmet fish and chips on the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen last year, she paired the meal with Showerings ‘because the tannins and bitterness of the fine cider cut right through the fattiness of the fish,’ says the brand’s heir apparent. ‘West Country cider is closer to a red wine: characterful, bodied and tannin-rich,’ Nick explains, ‘because the orchards here produce cider apples, unlike in the South-East.’ There, orchards tend to produce dessert apples, a sweeter variety whose cider is ‘lighter bodied’. Could cider tastings be the new wine tastings?
For young people, perhaps. ‘As they get priced out of fine wines,’ explains Hannah Crosbie, a wine critic for The Observer, ‘they can turn to fine cider, as it’s a more accessible entry point.’ The drink, she adds, is a far richer and more varied drink than people give it credit for: ‘It can range from peaty flavours to something more PetNat-adjacent' — the latter shorthand for Pétillant Naturel.
A purist may well turn their nose up; yet they’d be missing out. Near Taunton, the Temperley family has been making fine cider at Burrow Hill Farm since 1971. Their Somerset Pomona, a 20% ABV apple liqueur blending young cider apple juice with matured apple brandy, and aged in oak barrels, won gold at the Women's Wine and Spirit Awards last year.
Envelope-pushing chefs are keen to explore fine cider’s potential in cooking, too. Diarmuid Goodwin, a Northern Irish cook who trained under Angela Hartnett, says he used fine cider to make the base in a nettle and haddock chowder, which he recently prepared live on Virgin Media’s Six O’Clock Show. ‘I’m not usually a fan of cider,’ he laughs. ‘It reminds me of drinking behind a church when I was 15. In my ripe old age, however, I’ve learnt to appreciate the complexity of the real stuff.’ Sip slowly…
This feature first appeared in the April 29, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
