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Shiny shiny cider shiny

Look at the shiny. Go on, look at it. 

I think I may just about be recovering from a two-week long hangover. That’s the only reason I can think of why I haven’t written this blog before now.

On Tuesday 13th May, my compadre Bill Bradshaw and I were named winners of the Drink Book of the Year at the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards, for our book World’s Best Cider.
This is a deeply gratifying award to win. For one thing, it’s very heavy and shiny. Judged purely in terms of melted down scrap value, it’s worth more than my six Guild of Beer Writers Awards tankards put together. It works far better than those awards as a doorstop. On the downside, it’s not nearly as good as those tankards for drinking warm Efes out of in a kebab shop at 3am as you try in vain to keep the post-award party vibe going. 
What was even more gratifying was that this is, as the name suggests, an award that judges books on all types of drink. We were in a shortlist of three, up against a book about wine and a book about champagne. Every single judge on the panel from the drinks world was a wine writer. And when we stepped onto the fourth floor of Fortnum and Mason for the drinks and canapé reception, the only drinks being served were champagne and rosé wine. 
After a couple of remarks that could have been interpreted as hints by an optimistic dreamer, and one too many phone calls from the organisers just checking that we were both definitely coming, I’d started to get my hopes up. But as I took my glass of rosé across a jungle-thick carpet to admire flower arrangements that probably cost more than my house, I thought, ‘Under this brand, in this place, there is absolutely no way a book on cider is going to beat a book about wine or a book about champagne. No way.’
But we did. And we were quite happy about it.
Playing it cool for the cameras.
Apart from succeeding in a much broader (and posher) arena than I’m used to, what was so gratifying was the reaction from judges I had very, very wrongly assumed would be sniffy about our subject. I still occasionally bump into people who think the idea of writing about beer is humorously absurd. Not as much as I used to. But for many, the idea of a serious book on cider is laughable. 
Not so for chefs, food writers and wine writers. 
I won’t repeat the best complements we had (unless you ask me in the pub) because this would be an insufferably smug blog entry if I did. Safe to say people who write about other drinks and get much more attention for them are genuinely excited about cider and its potential to be explored in more detail.
Following the ceremony we were ushered to the basement bar in Fortnum’s for the after-party. Now, I’ve been to a great many beer events. I’ve seen people get pissed at parties. I thought beer writers, brewers and publicans could really put it away. But nothing I’ve seen in a decade in the beer world prepared me for the sheer almighty CARNAGE that happens when the broader food and drink industry gets together to party. Perhaps it’s because champagne gets you pissed quicker. Maybe it’s because the only food on offer did a far better job of looking beautiful than of filling you up. But I have never seen so many people get so drunk, so quickly, in one space.
At one point Stephen Fry popped in for what I’m guessing was a quiet drink. His face registered surprise at seeing us all there, briefly, before being torn apart by sotted chefs and fucked-up food writers clawing at him for selfies. He held his ground and chatted like a hero for as long as he could stand, and was then literally chased out of the building by several people who had been waiting their turn when he decided to flee. 
The Hairy Bikers – also winners on the night – stuck it out with us. Dave Myers has read my books and says he likes them so this didn’t feel too much of an imposition:

L-R: Hairy Pedestrian, Hairy Biker, unhairy publisher who believed in the cider book and made it happen 

The bar stocked one beer – Meantime Lager – and no ciders. None at all. There’s still a lot of work to do to get people to reconsider good quality cider and take it seriously outside its current niche. But this night felt like a start. I’ll be suggesting a few brands to Fortnum’s that they might want to stock now this has happened. We’re talking to another TV chef about ideas around cider. It feels like things might happen, and if feels like there’s a broader appetite to learn more about this misunderstood drink.

Thank you so much to Jo Copestick (above with Dave) who has been hassling me to work on a book with her for years and guided us into shaping the book that needed to be written about cider even when we wanted to write a different one. And thanks to everyone else at Jacqui Small Publishing who made it happen. And thanks to my co-conspirator, who emailed me out of the blue one day, never having met me, and informed me that we needed to work on a book together. Turns out the mad scrumpy-necking bastard was right.

4 Comments

4 Comments

Bromyard Boy

Immense credit and thanks to both you and Bill as well as JS for publishing this book on cider.
At a time when so manyl things cidery are on the up, in some ways, it still remains frustratingly tough to turn the craft of real cidermaking into a fully profitable business.
Until we make enough great cider, that is distributed everywhere, there remains the possibility that we will be forever masked by the more industrially minded production.
This outcome would be a great pity.
If a book can hold a door open, then right now it looks like we can at least get a good look round the room, courtesy of "World's Best Cider".
There remains as always, a lot of hard work to be done.

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Tim Frost

A very well deserved prize – my wife and I saw you at Abergavenny food festival in 2012 so I blame you for the killer hangover I got from going to the Welsh Cider and Cheese festival a couple of weeks ago, but after sampling numerous beers as a result of your books I do thank you for opening my eyes to the beauty of cider too.

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