Aiming for the Stars: Why Scottish Cider is Different
I absolutely love what’s happening with cider in Scotland just now! We’ve got so many new makers coming onto the scene that it’s actually getting hard to fit them all onto my Scottish cider map. We joked on the Scottish Cider group chat that pretty soon Fife will need its own break out map similar to Speyside on those Scotch Whisky maps you see about the place.
What’s most interesting about these new makers is that they’re all aiming for the stars with their cider. It’s all méthode traditionnelle, keeved, pet-nat, barrel-aged, single variety, wild yeast, etc. Creatively, these guys are really going for it.
No History, No Baggage
One of the big reasons for this I suspect could be down to us having no real cider history here. We are completely free to choose what we want to make. I remember the controversy when Thatchers first started making cider using culinary apples and pears; pearls were clutched across the Somerset levels!
Also, because of the high transport costs of getting stuff up here, we’ve never really had the exposure to the cheaper formats of traditional cider like the bag-in-box or the polykegs found in the South of England. For a long time, our Scottish bottle shops were stocked almost exclusively with cider supplied by Re:Stalk and Hard Pressed Cider Distribution. While Re:Stalk has since stopped trading, founders Grant & Jaye haven’t slowed down—they’ve actually gone on to open Scotland’s first dedicated cider shop, Aeble, over in Anstruther. The people championing cider up here know their stuff, and it’s just not worth the effort and cost to bring up something that’s not absolutely at the top of its game.
The MUP Effect
This focus on quality combines with a lack of Scottish distribution for the majority of southern cidermakers, and also the government’s Minimum Unit Pricing policy, meaning we just don’t get BiBs (Bag in Box) of old farmer John’s scrumpy in Scotland. We get Ross on Wye, Oliver’s, Little Pomona, Find & Foster, Ascension, etc.
So what’s starting to happen now, which is fascinating, is that key Scottish cider distributors are seeing great cider being made right here and are slowly starting to take it south. The Scottish cider vans are no longer driving to Hereford empty! I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the importance of those distributors, and retail pioneers like Aeble, to the health of Scottish cider.
Scarcity Breeds Quality
Another factor that may be steering our scene is that, typically, we don’t tend to have an abundance of fruit. If you’re in the South West or the Three Counties, you’re surrounded by orchards, so the only thing that’s limiting you is tank space, time, and a willing market.
Up here, we’re often limited by our crops. I think that makes Scottish cidermakers potentially more careful with it.
If you can only make 1,000 litres of cider a year because that’s all the fruit you’ve got, do you whack it all in a BiB and sell it on for the minimum unit price, or do you look for ways to add as much value as possible to that crop?
So while we might lack the sprawling, endless orchards of Somerset or the deep-rooted cider history of Herefordshire, what we do have is a blank canvas. The combination of geographic isolation, economic realities like Minimum Unit Pricing, and a genuine scarcity of apples has accidentally created the perfect incubator for a premium, boundary-pushing cider scene. We aren’t just making do with what we have; we are actively choosing to make it spectacular.
As for a wee prediction for the future? Give it another five to ten years, and I reckon Scottish cider will be commanding the same respect as our whiskies and gins. The traditional cider heartlands won’t just be buying our cider; they’ll be looking north for inspiration.
Cheers,
Ryan.
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