How to taste cider systematically

Fix the conditions, because they are variables. Use the same shape of glass throughout, filled to the same level — a third of a stemmed tulip is a good working standard. Serve everything at the same temperature, and note what that temperature is, because a flight tasted at 6 °C and one tasted at 12 °C will not agree with each other.

Taste somewhere without competing smells. Kitchens, rooms where anyone is wearing scent, and rooms that have recently held food are all poor. Daylight or neutral white light is needed for appearance; a warm domestic bulb will make every cider look more golden than it is.

Write as you go, on paper or a screen, in a form that stays the same between sessions. Memory for aroma is poor and highly suggestible, and a note reconstructed twenty minutes later is largely a note about what was expected.

Decide in advance whether you are swallowing or spitting. For more than three or four samples, spitting is the only way the later samples are assessed on the same terms as the first.

Hold the glass against a white surface and look through the liquid rather than at it. Record colour by hue and depth — straw, gold, amber, copper, pink where the fruit or process warrants it — and note that colour in cider is a poor predictor of anything, because it is driven by fruit, oxidation, ageing vessel and any added colour rather than by style.

Clarity is the more informative observation. Brilliant, clear, hazy and cloudy are the usual bands. Record which, and where a cider is hazy, note whether the haze is even or whether solids are visibly suspended, because those have different causes.

For a carbonated cider, note the bubble size, the persistence of the mousse and whether bubbles are rising in streams or forming on the glass wall. Remember that this observation is at least as much about the glass as about the cider.

Do not draw quality conclusions from appearance. A hazy cider may be unfiltered by intention or faulted; a brilliant one may be sterile-filtered or naturally fined. Appearance narrows the possibilities and settles none of them.

Smell the glass before swirling. The still headspace holds the most volatile compounds and shows the ciders most likely to be lost after agitation — the light esters, and any reductive sulphur character, which is easiest to catch on the first sniff.

Then swirl and smell again. Swirling coats the glass wall and increases the evaporating surface, so heavier and less volatile compounds come up: phenolic character, oak, oxidative notes, the deeper fruit.

Take short sniffs rather than long ones, and give the nose a few seconds between them. Olfactory adaptation sets in quickly, so the third continuous sniff tells you very little; short, separated sniffs delay it.

Record what is there in families first and specifics second — fruit, floral, spice, phenolic, fermentation, oxidative, sulphur, fault — and only then reach for a precise descriptor. Starting from a specific descriptor tends to produce a note about the descriptor rather than about the cider.

Take enough into the mouth to coat it — around 10 ml — and move it across the whole tongue and palate before making any judgement. The five basic tastes available here are sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami, and cider is chiefly a question of the first three.

Separate sweetness from fruitiness. A dry cider with a strong ripe-apple aroma is very frequently described as sweet by people reporting the aroma rather than the taste, and separating the two is the single most useful discipline in cider tasting.

Separate bitterness from astringency. Bitterness is a taste, perceived on the tongue, and in cider it comes chiefly from smaller phenolic molecules. Astringency is a tactile sensation of drying and roughening, produced by larger procyanidins precipitating salivary proteins. A cider can have plenty of one and little of the other, and describing both as "tannic" loses the distinction that matters most in traditional cider.

Assess body, carbonation and warmth as textures rather than as flavours. Body is the weight of the liquid; carbonation is prickle and mousse; alcohol above about 7 per cent begins to contribute a perceptible warmth.

Swallow or spit, then wait. The finish is what remains after ten, twenty and sixty seconds, and it is where the difference between an adequate cider and an interesting one usually shows. Note its length, and note what the last thing standing is: acid, tannin, sugar, fruit, or a fault that only appears at the end.

Then come back to the glass. A cider assessed a second time, five minutes later and slightly warmer, frequently reads differently, and the direction of the change is informative: a cider that improves as it warms was being served too cold, and one that falls apart was showing better than it is.

Write an overall statement in a sentence, before reading anything about the cider. What is it, does it hang together, and what would have to change for it to be better. Reading the back label first is how a tasting note becomes a paraphrase of marketing copy.