Willie Smith’s Yarlington Mill 2018

Willie Smith’s are continuing to play with single variety ciders. This time they are taking on the big guns of the cider apple world. Welcome the Willie Smith’s Yarlington Mill Cider

Let’s go back to 1898, the Spanish-American war is in full swing, London had the world’s first car fatality… in an electric car. Meanwhile, west of London in Somerset there was a little apple tree seedling growing out of a wall that surrounded a water mill. This mill was in the village of Yarlington. I still can’t work out why these apples are called Yarlington Mill!

Today the Yarlington Mill apple is well known as a cider making apple. It’s one of a very few varieties that is full bodied enough to go into a single variety cider. These particular apples are all grown locally in Tasmania.

The Nose

Exactly as aromatic as you would expect from a Somerset inspired cider. It is full of warming Apricot pineapple and rounded out with baked apple.

The Taste

Waves some moose lapping up and down your tongue like sea foam, rolling in at the shore. Smooth apple juice is reduced to powder as the drying properties of the Yarlington Mills’ tannins kick. If you have ever bitten into an apple before the sun has had a chance to ripen it, there is that power drying affect, that this Cider replicates. It’s fruity, apricot and baked apples. This texture is like a good Netflix series, you always want a little more. From that creamy moose to the chalky dust you always want the next episode, even if it is just to work out what’s going on.

Final Thoughts on the Willie Smith’s Yarlington Mill

The Yarlington Mill is a bitter sweet apple and this is every bit the textbook example of what the British apples potential in a Cider can be. With nowhere to hind in the production process, no oak, no blending it is just the collaboration between the Orchardist and the Cider marker that makes this cider. It’s a bloody good cider but at this point would you expect anything less from Tim Jones and the Willie Smiths team?

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