The First Drink of Christmas: The DeCider

I’m a huge fan of a nog at Christmas, but I do accept that the antipodean summer climes don’t suit raw eggs and cream heavy drinks particularly well. An alternative to the Northern nogs has been thunk up by Ed Loveday of the Passage in Darlinghurst.

The Batlow cider it uses is a drier drop than many of the sugar heavy bottles that have hit the shelves and shores of the lucky country of late and plays nicely with the herbaceous characters of the Noilly and the Yellow Chartreuse.  There are also not enough opportunities to add a start anise to a great looking cocktail.

The DeCider

40ml Zubrowka Bison Grass Vodka
15ml Noilly Pratt Dry Vermouth
10ml Yellow Chartreuse
20ml Lemon Juice
1tsp Sugar
Dash Egg White
1 Star Anise Pod (Garnish)
Batlow Premium Cider

Combine all liquids (except for Batlow Premium Cider) in a mixing glass and fill with ice. Cover and shake hard. Strain out, and return to mixing glass without ice. Dry shake (without ice) for 45-60 seconds. Pour into wine glass and top with Batlow Premium Cider. Garnish with a star anise pod.

Batlow Premium Cider

It’s an open secret that the cider market is going  nuts in Australia, outstripping the market standard single figure growth stats with upwards of a 68% nudge year on year. While my own prodigious thirst can’t quite account that number, so I’m sure I can’t be the only one enjoy a cider from time to time.

Keep an eye out for a new Australian entrant to the segment, Batlow Premium Cider.

A crafty collaboration between a couple of entrepreneurial brothers whose London experience instilled a love of cider and the Batlow Growers collective, a group of folk as passionate about apples as it is possible to be.

Sam Coombes, one half of the pairing spruiking the brand cut his teeth as Marketing Director for MTV, so expect some cool content to tell the story of the brand – hitting the interwebs in a week or so. They also have a Cadbury-esque claim of three and a half apples in every bottle and you can taste each one.

The product itself is good. Fans of the dryer styles like Magners and Weston’s will be pleasantly surprised by the flavour of this local option. The process does not include a pasteurisation, so the fruit flavour is really present and layered in the final product, imparting an almost wine like finish.

I’m looking forward to icing some down with a lick of rye to smooth the passage of week to weekend tonight.

It’s a good story, told with some cheek and backed by an authentic home in Batlow with the growers. It should be fun to watch things unfold.

$18 will get you four to take home. You’ll be able to find it at a selection of up-ish market venues to boot. Stockists info here. Very much a NSW (and ACT) thing for now, but get drinking and hopefully that will spread.