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What is the thing I am describing called?
Sixty-nine styles filtered by what is actually in the glass — sweetness, tannin, acidity, carbonation and body — for when you know what you want and not what to ask for.
Every style here carries a declared sensory profile: where the family sits, with a stated spread, derived from how the style is defined and made rather than from tasting any particular producer. Two makers working in the same tradition will differ, and a bottle that sits outside its style’s band is not mislabelled. Use this to narrow the question, then read the style page, which says what to attend to and what tasters routinely get wrong.
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Leave anything blank that you do not mind about. Every constraint narrows the list, and no combination is wrong — an empty result is a real answer about what this site holds.
Sweetness
Tannin
Acidity
Carbonation
Body
69 of 69 styles.
Dry cider
Defined by sweetness
Cider fermented out or finished so that little fermentable sugar remains, leaving acid, tannin and alcohol to carry the palate.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Slightly warmer than a sweet cider — around 10–12 °C. Cold suppresses aroma and sweetness while leaving acid untouched, which pushes an already dry cider towards austerity.
Medium cider
Defined by sweetness
Cider carrying enough residual or added sugar to be perceptible without dominating, the commonest sweetness level in British retail.
- Medium
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Around 8–10 °C. Cold suppresses sweetness perception while leaving acid untouched, so an over-chilled medium cider reads as an unbalanced dry one — the sugar is still there and the palate has stopped registering it.
Sweet cider
Defined by sweetness
Cider in which sugar is the leading sensation, whether retained from an arrested fermentation, added after it, or produced by keeving.
- Sweet
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Colder than a dry cider, around 6–8 °C. Perceived sweetness falls with temperature while acidity barely moves, so cold sharpens a sweet cider into balance.
Still cider
Defined by carbonation
Cider with no perceptible dissolved carbon dioxide, presented as a fermented fruit drink whose texture rests on body, acid and tannin alone.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Still
- Medium
A stemmed glass with a narrowing bowl, and warmer than you would serve a sparkling cider — 10–14 °C. There is no gas to carry the aroma, so the glass has to.
Pétillant cider
Defined by carbonation
Lightly carbonated cider in which the gas is felt as a prickle rather than a stream of bubbles, the level most traditional bottle fermentation reaches on its own.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Poured gently and drunk promptly. The gas is the category and there is not much of it.
Sparkling cider
Defined by carbonation
Cider carrying enough dissolved carbon dioxide to produce a persistent bubble, by bottle fermentation, tank fermentation or injection.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Fully sparkling
- Medium
Cold, and opened slowly with the bottle at an angle. Several atmospheres released quickly takes a good deal of the cider with it.
Bottle-conditioned cider
Defined by carbonation
Cider that completes a fermentation inside its sealed bottle, generating its own carbonation and, in most cases, leaving a yeast deposit behind.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Fully sparkling
- Medium
Stood upright for a day, then poured in one movement, leaving the last centimetre in the bottle. Stopping and restarting the pour lifts the deposit into the glass.
Keeved cider
Defined by how it is made
Cider clarified before fermentation by a pectin gel that strips nutrients from the juice, producing a slow ferment that stops naturally with sugar still in solution.
- Sweet
- Noticeable
- Soft
- Light or natural
- Full
Cellar temperature, around 10–12 °C, in a glass with a bowl. The sweetness here was bought at the cost of alcohol, and chilling it away leaves a low-strength cider with nothing much in its place.
Wild-fermented cider
Defined by how it is made
Cider fermented by the yeast population already present on the fruit and in the cellar, without an added cultured strain.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Cellar temperature. A wild ferment carries a wider aromatic range than a cultured one — some of it wanted, some of it borderline — and warmth is what makes it legible enough to judge rather than merely present.
Barrel-aged cider
Defined by how it is made
Cider matured in wood, where slow oxygen ingress, extraction from the staves and the barrel’s resident microflora all change the finished drink.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Still
- Medium
Cellar temperature or a little above, in a glass with a bowl, and give it a few minutes. What wood contributes is slow and oxidative rather than sharp, and it is the slowest part of the aroma to arrive.
Unfiltered cider
Defined by how it is made
Cider packaged without filtration, retaining suspended yeast and fine solids and the body and aroma that come with them.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Cool rather than cold, and decide before pouring whether the sediment is coming with it. Poured off the lees it is a clearer, lighter drink; roused in, it is fuller and hazier. Both are legitimate and they are not the same cider.
Single-varietal cider
Defined by how it is made
Cider made wholly or overwhelmingly from one apple cultivar, presented so that the fruit’s own character is the subject of the drink.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Cellar temperature, in a glass with a bowl. The whole proposition is that one fruit is legible, and chilling removes exactly the aromatic detail that makes it so.
Blended cider
Defined by how it is made
Cider assembled from several cultivars, parcels or vintages so that the finished balance is a made decision rather than an inherited one.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Around 10–12 °C. A blend is an argument about balance, and balance is temperature-dependent: the same blend read cold and read warm shifts its emphasis from acid towards sweetness and body.
Vintage cider
Defined by how it is made
Cider from the fruit of a single named harvest, made and sold as an expression of that season rather than of a house style.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Cellar temperature, and against a note from the previous vintage if you have one. The point of a vintage cider is the difference between seasons, and that comparison is the only way to see it.
Ice cider
Concentrated
Cider made from apple juice concentrated by freezing, fermented slowly and stopped while a large residual sugar remains, giving a dessert-strength drink of high acid and high sweetness.
- Sweet
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Still
- Full
Cold, in a small glass. It is a concentrated drink and the serving sizes reflect that.
Ice perry
Concentrated
Perry made from pear juice concentrated by freezing, in which the fruit’s unfermentable sorbitol adds to the residual sweetness the arrested ferment leaves behind.
- Sweet
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Still
- Full
Cold, in a small glass, and in a small measure. Sweetness at this concentration fatigues the palate quickly, and the acid that keeps it drinkable is easier to find in the second sip than the fifth.
Apple wine
Defined by how it is made
A fermented apple drink made to wine strength, usually by raising the starting gravity, and presented and taxed as a wine rather than as a cider.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Still
- Medium
Around 12 °C in a stemmed glass. At wine strength the alcohol carries aroma readily and also reads as heat if it is served too warm, so this sits above cider temperature and below room temperature.
Pommeau
Defined by how it is made
A blend of fresh apple juice and apple brandy, mixed before fermentation so that the spirit prevents it, then aged in oak.
- Sweet
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Still
- Full
Cold, in a small glass, as an aperitif in the Norman practice. It is around three times the strength of cider.
West Country farmhouse cider
A regional tradition
Cider made on the farm from tannic bittersweet fruit, wild-fermented in wood and sold still and unfiltered, in a tradition whose variability is one of its defining features.
- Dry
- Firm
- Soft
- Still
- Full
Cellar temperature rather than fridge temperature. Cold flattens tannin and shuts down exactly the aromatic complexity this style is made for.
Somerset cider
A regional tradition
Cider from the Somerset levels and the surrounding hills, built on a locally selected bittersweet fruit population and a tradition of full-bodied, tannic, still cider.
- Dry
- Firm
- Soft
- Still
- Full
Cellar temperature — around 12 °C — and never from the fridge. Chilling suppresses aroma and sweetness perception while leaving tannin and acid untouched, which turns a full soft cider hard and hollow.
Herefordshire cider
A regional tradition
Cider from the county with England’s largest cider orchard area, protected as a geographical indication and spanning farmhouse practice, bottle-fermented cider and industrial-scale production.
- Dry
- Firm
- Soft
- Light or natural
- Full
Cellar temperature, in a glass with a bowl rather than a straight one. The tannin needs warmth to read as texture rather than as bitterness, and the aroma is modest enough that a narrow glass will lose it.
Three Counties cider
A regional tradition
The shared cider and perry tradition of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, defined by a common fruit inventory and by the perry pear orchards that survive nowhere else in comparable numbers.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Cellar temperature for the cider, a little cooler for the perry. Perry aroma is more fragile and more volatile than cider aroma, so it wants to be cool enough to hold together and warm enough to be there at all.
Welsh cider
A regional tradition
Cider from Wales, rebuilt over recent decades from a nearly lost tradition, with protected names for traditional Welsh cider and perry and a fruit inventory shared with the English border counties.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Cool cellar temperature. The tradition here was rebuilt recently and the range is wide, so a first glass at around 11 °C tells you which end of it you are at before you decide how to serve the rest.
Eastern counties cider
A regional tradition
Cider from eastern and south-eastern England made largely from dessert and culinary apples, giving a lighter, sharper and less tannic drink than the West Country tradition.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Light or natural
- Light
Cold, around 8 °C. This is a bright, low-tannin, acid-driven cider with very little structure to lose, and cold suits it in a way it does not suit a tannic West Country one.
Scottish cider
A regional tradition
Cider from Scotland, made in a cool maritime climate from dessert, culinary and cold-tolerant fruit, in a small sector built largely within recent decades.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Light or natural
- Light
Cold, around 8 °C. Cool-climate fruit gives high acid and modest tannin, and the aromatic freshness that results is best held at a temperature that keeps it tight.
Irish cider
A regional tradition
Cider from Ireland, dominated commercially by large-scale production from Armagh and imported fruit, with a smaller full-juice sector working from orchard-grown apples.
- Medium
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Fully sparkling
- Light
Cold. The commercial mainstream of this category is built to be drunk cold and carbonated, and assessing it at cellar temperature is judging it outside the conditions it was designed for.
Scrumpy
A regional tradition
A colloquial West Country word for rough farm cider that has never had a fixed definition and now carries as much marketing weight as descriptive meaning.
- Dry
- Firm
- Soft
- Still
- Medium
Cellar temperature, in whatever it is offered in, and with the expectation that it will be variable. The word describes a circumstance of production rather than a specification, and the range between two examples is wider than for any defined style.
Traditional draught cider
A regional tradition
Cider dispensed from cask, bag-in-box or gravity without added gas, in the form that British cider has historically been drunk in pubs and at the farm gate.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Still
- Medium
From the container, without gas, and drunk reasonably promptly once broached. An opened bag-in-box or cask oxidises.
Modern mainstream cider
A regional tradition
The industrially produced, consistent, carbonated cider that accounts for most of what is sold worldwide, generally made partly from concentrate and finished to a fixed specification.
- Medium
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Fully sparkling
- Light
Cold and carbonated, which is what it was engineered for. Warming it does not reveal hidden depth; it removes the carbonation and the chill that the formulation assumes, which is a different drink and not a better one.
Cidre de Normandie
A regional tradition
Protected Normandy cider made from the region’s bitter and bittersweet fruit, characteristically low in alcohol, sweet-edged and lightly sparkling.
- Sweet
- Noticeable
- Soft
- Light or natural
- Medium
Cool but not cold, in a bowl glass or the traditional *bolée*. Cold suppresses the aromatic sweetness the style is built on.
Cidre Pays d’Auge
A regional tradition
The controlled appellation cider of the Pays d’Auge in Calvados, made by keeving from bitter Norman fruit and bottle-conditioned to a low alcohol and a high residual sugar.
- Sweet
- Firm
- Soft
- Light or natural
- Full
Cellar temperature rather than cold — around 10–12 °C — in a glass with a bowl. Chilling suppresses the aroma and the sweetness while leaving the tannin untouched, which turns a balanced example bitter.
Cidre de Bretagne
A regional tradition
Protected Breton cider, built on a distinct western fruit inventory and generally drier, lighter and more acid-led than its Norman counterpart.
- Medium
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Cool, around 9–11 °C, in a bowl or a bolée. Breton cider is drier and more phenolic than Norman, and it needs enough warmth for the tannin to read as texture.
Cidre doux
Defined by sweetness
The sweet tier of the French cider scale, defined since 2025 by a density at or above 1.024 together with an acquired strength no greater than 3% vol, so that the sweetness is demonstrably unfermented juice sugar.
- Sweet
- Noticeable
- Soft
- Light or natural
- Full
Cold, around 8 °C, and in a small measure. At this density the sweetness is substantial and the alcohol is very low, so cold and carbonation are both doing the work that would otherwise fall to acid.
Cidre brut
Defined by sweetness
The dry tier of the French cider scale, defined since 2025 by a density no greater than 1.016 with an acquired strength of at least 3.5% vol — correspondingly more of the juice’s sugar converted to alcohol.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Around 10 °C in a glass with a bowl. Cold pushes an already dry cider towards austerity by suppressing what little sweetness there is while leaving the tannin and acid intact.
Cidre demi-sec
Defined by sweetness
The middle tier of the French cider scale, sitting between doux and brut on density and forming the commercial centre of ground for much French cider.
- Medium
- Noticeable
- Soft
- Light or natural
- Medium
Around 9–10 °C. The middle tier is the one most easily unbalanced by temperature in either direction — too cold and it reads dry, too warm and the sweetness dominates the modest acid.
Poiré Domfront
Perry
The controlled appellation perry of the Domfrontais in southern Normandy, made predominantly from the Plant de Blanc pear on high-standard trees and finished sweet, low in alcohol and bottle-conditioned.
- Sweet
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Cool, in a glass with a bowl, and poured to preserve the mousse. The carbonation is part of the specification.
Cidre fermier
A regional tradition
Farm-made French cider, pressed and fermented on the holding that grew the fruit, sold as an agricultural product of that farm rather than as a regional or industrial one.
- Medium
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Cellar temperature, and with some tolerance for variation between bottles. Farm cider is made in small parcels without much intervention, and two bottles from one holding may genuinely differ.
Sidra natural
A regional tradition
The still, dry, unfiltered cider of Asturias and the Basque Country, wild-fermented from local high-acid fruit and poured from a height to raise a momentary sparkle.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Sharp
- Still
- Light
Poured from height into a wide, straight glass, a *culete* at a time, and drunk immediately. The gas and the lift both disappear within a minute, which is why the measure is small.
Sidra espumosa
A regional tradition
Sparkling Asturian cider made by a second fermentation under pressure or in bottle, presented as a fine sparkling drink rather than in the still poured tradition.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Fully sparkling
- Light
Cold, in a stemmed glass, poured normally. This is the Asturian style that is not poured from height.
Euskal Sagardoa
A regional tradition
Basque cider under its own protected designation, made from Basque-grown apples in the *sagardotegi* tradition of barrel service and dry, high-acid, still cider.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Sharp
- Still
- Light
A short pour into the base of a wide glass, drunk immediately. The lift is gone within a minute.
Galician cider
A regional tradition
Cider from Galicia and the north-western Iberian fringe, made in a smaller and less codified tradition than its Asturian and Basque neighbours, from a distinct local fruit population.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Still
- Light
Cool and poured with some height, in the local manner. The pour is not decoration: it aerates a still, sharp, low-carbonation cider and briefly lifts an aroma that otherwise stays in the glass.
Sidra de nueva expresión
A regional tradition
A modern Asturian category of filtered, clean, dry cider made with controlled fermentation and presented in a wine format rather than in the poured tradition.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Still
- Light
Cold, around 8 °C, and in a wine glass rather than a sidra glass. This category was made deliberately clean and stable and does not want the long pour the traditional style requires.
Apfelwein
A regional tradition
The dry, sharp, still apple wine of Hesse, fermented out from culinary and local fruit and served in ridged glasses from a stoneware jug.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Still
- Light
From a *Bembel* into a *Geripptes* — a ridged glass whose facets scatter light and give a grip on a wet glass. Cool rather than cold.
Viez
A regional tradition
The cider of the Moselle and Saarland, dry and still in the local manner, drunk from a distinctive lidded pot and named from a word for the second pressing.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Still
- Light
Cool, still, and from a wide vessel if one is offered. The local glass is part of the practice, and the drink is dry and sharp enough that the shape of what it is drunk from changes the pace more than the flavour.
Most
A regional tradition
The farmhouse fermented fruit drink of Austria and southern Germany, made from apples, pears or both, and belonging to a meadow-orchard landscape as much as to a recipe.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Still
- Light
Cool rather than cold, in a plain glass. Farmhouse Most is sharp and lightly oxidative, and enough warmth to let the oxidative note read as character rather than as a fault is the difference between understanding it and rejecting it.
Mostviertel Birnenmost
Perry
Austrian pear Most from the Mostviertel, made from the region’s tannic standard-tree perry pears, in which sorbitol leaves a soft sweetness no fermentation removes.
- Medium
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Still
- Medium
Cellar temperature. Pear Most from tannic standard trees carries more grip than an apple Most and finishes above 1.000 because of sorbitol, so it wants the warmth a fuller drink wants.
Suure Most
A regional tradition
The Swiss farmhouse cider of the plateau, typically dry and still, drawn from meadow-orchard fruit and distinguished in local usage from the unfermented sweet juice of the same name.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Light or natural
- Light
Cool, still, in a plain glass. It is dry, sharp and lightly oxidative, and there is no carbonation and little tannin to carry it — so temperature and the freshness of the bottle are most of what varies.
Polish cider
A regional tradition
Cider from Poland, a recent sector built on Europe’s largest apple crop and on dessert and culinary fruit rather than on an inherited cider tradition.
- Medium
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Fully sparkling
- Light
Cold. A recent sector built on dessert fruit, high acid and carbonation, and it is made to be met at fridge temperature rather than cellar temperature.
New England cider
A regional tradition
A strong, dry, oxidative American cider historically raised in gravity with sugar, molasses or raisins and matured in wood, now defined chiefly as a competition category.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Still
- Medium
Around 12 °C in a stemmed glass. This is a strong, dry, oxidative cider and it is closer to a wine in what it asks for: enough warmth to carry the aroma, not so much that the alcohol reads as heat.
American heritage cider
A regional tradition
Cider made from the North American heirloom cultivars that survived the collapse of the country’s cider industry, and presented as an expression of that recovered fruit.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Sharp
- Light or natural
- Medium
Cellar temperature, in a glass with a bowl. Heirloom fruit is aromatic and the point of the category is that the cultivars are distinguishable, which they are not at fridge temperature.
Modern American cider
A regional tradition
The dominant contemporary American category: cider from culinary and dessert apples, fermented clean, often carbonated and frequently flavoured, defined against the heritage sector rather than by any tradition.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Fully sparkling
- Light
Cold if it is carbonated and clean, cellar temperature if it is aiming at a European idiom — and the label will not always tell you which, so the first glass is the test.
Quebec ice cider
Concentrated
Ice cider made under Quebec’s reserved designation, which sets out how the juice may be concentrated, what may be added and what the finished product must contain.
- Sweet
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Still
- Full
Cold, in a small glass. It is a concentrated drink.
Graff
Fruit or flavoured
A hybrid of cider and beer, fermented from apple juice with malt and usually hops, originating in North American homebrewing rather than in any orchard tradition.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Fully sparkling
- Medium
Cold, in a glass with a bowl. The malt contributes body and the hops contribute aroma, and both behave the way they do in beer rather than the way apple does in cider.
Australian cider
A regional tradition
Cider from Australia, dominated by a large mainstream sector using dessert fruit and concentrate, with a smaller full-juice movement working from cool-climate orchards.
- Medium
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Fully sparkling
- Light
Cold. The mainstream of this category is dessert fruit, high carbonation and moderate sweetness, made to be drunk cold in a warm climate.
Tasmanian cider
A regional tradition
Cider from Tasmania, whose cool maritime climate and long apple-growing history give fruit with the acid that most Australian districts cannot hold.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Light or natural
- Light
Cool, around 8–10 °C. Cool-climate fruit gives acid and aroma rather than tannin, and the aromatic detail is the thing worth preserving.
New Zealand cider
A regional tradition
Cider from New Zealand, made in a country with a substantial export apple industry and a small but technically confident craft cider sector.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Fully sparkling
- Light
Cold, around 8 °C. High acid, high carbonation and aromatic dessert fruit, with little tannin to be hardened by the chill.
South African cider
A regional tradition
Cider from South Africa, where a very large mainstream category built on Western Cape dessert fruit dominates and a small craft sector works alongside it.
- Medium
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Fully sparkling
- Light
Cold. A very large mainstream category built for a warm climate, and assessing it warm judges it against a standard it was never made for.
Perry
Perry
The fermented drink of pears, a tradition parallel to cider rather than derived from it, in which unfermentable sorbitol leaves a sweetness the maker never chose.
- Medium
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Cool, and soon. Perry is more fragile than cider and a good deal of it is at its best within a year.
Poiré
Perry
French perry, made chiefly in southern Normandy and Maine from local perry pears, characteristically sweet, low in alcohol and firmly sparkling.
- Sweet
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Fully sparkling
- Medium
Cold, around 8–10 °C, in a glass with a bowl and poured to keep the mousse. The carbonation is doing the work that acid does in a sharper drink, so a poiré that has gone flat is a different and much sweeter proposition.
Still perry
Perry
Perry without carbonation, in which the fruit’s sorbitol sweetness and its texture carry a drink that has no bubble to lean on.
- Medium
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Still
- Medium
A stemmed glass and cellar temperature. There is no gas, so the glass and the warmth have to do the work.
Sparkling perry
Perry
Perry carrying a persistent bubble, a presentation that suits pear’s aromatics and residual sorbitol and has a documented history going back to the seventeenth century.
- Medium
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Fully sparkling
- Medium
Cold but not iced — around 8–10 °C — in a glass with enough bowl to hold the mousse. Colder than that and the pear aroma the gas exists to carry will not be there to be carried.
Bottle-conditioned perry
Perry
Perry that completes its fermentation in the sealed bottle, generating carbonation and lees character while the fruit’s sorbitol keeps a sweetness the yeast cannot remove.
- Dry
- Noticeable
- Moderate
- Fully sparkling
- Medium
Stood upright, poured in one movement, and treated with the caution any sweet bottle-conditioned drink deserves.
Fruit cider
Fruit or flavoured
Cider with other fruit added as juice, purée or flavouring, a category that now accounts for a large share of the global market and spans a very wide range of practice.
- Sweet
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Fully sparkling
- Light
Cold. Added fruit and residual sweetness both read heavier as they warm, and a fruit cider at cellar temperature is usually cloying in a way the same bottle is not from the fridge.
Spiced cider
Fruit or flavoured
Cider flavoured with spices, either fermented and packaged that way or mulled and served warm, with the two practices frequently confused.
- Medium
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Medium
Depends entirely on which kind it is. A cider fermented and packaged with spice is served cold like any other; a mulled one is served hot, and heating drives off both the alcohol and the more volatile aromatics — which is part of the intention rather than a loss.
Hopped cider
Fruit or flavoured
Cider dry-hopped or hopped in process, borrowing aroma and bitterness from a brewing ingredient to supply what low-tannin apples cannot.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Fully sparkling
- Light
Cold, and soon. Hop aroma is among the least stable things that can be put in a drink, and a hopped cider is a perishable proposition in a way an unhopped one is not.
Botanical cider
Fruit or flavoured
Cider infused with herbs, flowers, roots or bark, a small modern category with old antecedents in the practice of flavouring fermented drinks with what was to hand.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Light or natural
- Light
Cool rather than cold, in a glass with a bowl. The infused material is usually aromatic rather than structural, and cold removes precisely the part that was added.
Low-alcohol cider
Low or no alcohol
Cider at a reduced strength, reached either by removing alcohol from a finished cider or by arranging for less to be produced, with different consequences for flavour.
- Medium
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Fully sparkling
- Light
Cold, and in a glass that shows the carbonation. Alcohol contributes body and sweetness perception, and a reduced-strength cider has lost both — so carbonation and chill are carrying more of the drink than they would otherwise.
Alcohol-free cider
Low or no alcohol
A cider-derived drink at or near zero alcohol, distinct from apple juice in having been fermented, and facing the same problem of what replaces the ethanol.
- Sweet
- Little or none
- Moderate
- Fully sparkling
- Light
Cold, and judged as its own thing rather than against a full-strength cider. With almost no alcohol and very little body, what is left is aroma, acid and carbonation, and warmth exposes the gap where the alcohol was.
Cider vinegar
Defined by how it is made
Not a cider but its next stage: cider whose ethanol has been oxidised to acetic acid by bacteria, made deliberately as a condiment and arrived at accidentally as a fault.
- Dry
- Little or none
- Sharp
- Still
- Light
Not a drinking proposition, and not assessed as one. Judged by smell and by a very small taste on the tongue rather than by the mouthful, because acetic acid at this concentration will overwhelm the palate for anything tasted afterwards.
Next
- All 69 styles — the full list, grouped by how each one is defined rather than by how it tastes.
- How to taste cider and perry — the order of operations behind the dimensions this page filters on.
- Sweetness decoder — why the word on the label and the sweetness in the glass are two different things across borders.
- Fault or style feature — where the line falls when a style’s characteristic note is also somebody else’s fault.