THE BRISTOL CIDER REVIVAL

The orchards of the West Country once harboured hundreds of local apple varieties, and scrumpy, or rough cider, made in all the surrounding farms, was Bristol’s favourite vice. In recent decades, industrialisation has seen the big cider makers turn to cheap imported apple juices, with cider’s image following its quality downhill. A handful of picturesquely dilapidated old boozers lingers on, with aged denizens sipping pints of Thatchers with slices of lemon in the gloom.

But a new breed of cider drinkers and makers is now enthusiastically in place. The revived orchards around The Ethicurean restaurant are now producing Barley Wood cider via a massive antique apple press and

The Ethicurean hosts upmarket Wassail parties in January. Across the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Abbots Leigh, a lovely sloping orchard planted by Redvers Coate, the Forties Somerset cider magnate, has been rescued from abandonment by Wilding Cider. It’s the work of Sam Leach and Beccy Massey, who gave up their highly praised Bristol restaurant Birch, with its pioneering fine-cider list, to bring similar meticulously researched skills to the creation of limited-edition bottlings bearing micro-local names of origin such as Nempnett Thrubwell and Ditcheat Hill.

The new cider revival is by no means confined to soigné joints like the neo-Italian wine bar Marmo and Michelin-starred Osip restaurant in nearby Bruton. Witness The Cider

Box, a sort of cross between Somerset harvest barn and the car spray workshop it formerly was, under a railway arch in what proprietor Dan Heath calls ‘the Lower East Side of Bristol’. On weekend afternoons, a youngish crowd overflows outside to sit on concrete traffic blocks eating vintage Barber’s Cheddar and drinking Burrow Hill Kingston Black or Worleys Stoke Red. For expert guidance on everything to do with the new cider scene, tasting kits and much else, the Bristol Cider Shop bristolcidershop. co.uk is an invaluable online resource.