Batlow Road Apple Cider

Batlow Road Apple Cider has just launched onto the market. If you have eaten an apple from a quality greengrocer you’ve probably eaten one of their apples. As with most orchardist wanting to make the most of their products, they have converted some apples into Cider. 

The Batlow Road Apple Cider is a single estate cider from the Wilgro Orchards just outside of Batlow in New South Wales. These orchards were planted about 30 years ago. Batlow is famous for its’ apples. The town is 700m above sea level with the surrounding land even higher. Its’ good soil is wet with plenty of rainfall. All-round it’s easy to see why it got its’ reputation for quality apples.

Now at this point, you might be thinking is this the same Batlow Cider that makes the Saison Cider? The short answer is “No”. The longer answer is Wilgro Orchards are a supplier to Batlow Cider however Batlow Road Cider is owned by Wilgro. 

The cidermakers have chosen to keep this as simple as possible. Starting with a mix of Jonathan, Honeycrisp and a handful of cider apples. Fermented in the tank with wild yeast. Then it’s bottled with a splash of fresh juice, to kick start the bottle fermentation. It’s early days for the cider maker so there is some variation in the volume of bubbles in each bottle. Batlow Road Cider has no added sugar, no water and most interestingly no sulphites. I’m often asked about Ciders without sulphites so here is one for you guys.  

The Nose 

All sorts of toffee apples provide the sweetness balanced out with the scent of raspberry and acetone. 

The Taste 

This is taking me back to Somerset with that acetone hit. It’s balancing that out with a fairly healthy whack of sweetness. Yeah, that sweetening is pretty interesting, it’s coming in from that raspberry flavour. Let me be clear it’s just apples in this bottle, no raspberries here. The Batlow cider is low on fizz which is letting all the flavours roll around your mouth. Slight sourness, big acid with plenty of fruit. Nice thick texture. 

Final Thoughts on the Batlow Road Cider 

I very much enjoyed the Batlow Road Cider. It’s far from perfect. There is too much sediment (that does not affect the flavour in this case) and the carbonation levels vary between bottles. But these guys are new to cider making.  Pressurised fermentation tanks are going to be installed for the next vintage which should help both issues. However,…

This is the type of cider that I have been looking for. Something simply made doing a lot with limited apple choice, something that plays with wild yeasts, something honest, something that packs in so much flavour.  

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