The bubbly that's older than champagne

A return to traditional bottle-fermentation is putting the fizz back into British cider. Dave Matthews uncorks the best

In Normandy smallholdings, French farmhouse cider is as rare as hen's teeth. It's the golden and sparkling, fruity and tannic bottled ciders that holidaymakers find go so well with Normandy's creamy cuisine. Then they come home and wonder why we have all the orchards, so much cider, but no British cork-topped equivalent.

In Normandy smallholdings, French farmhouse cider is as rare as hen's teeth. It's the golden and sparkling, fruity and tannic bottled ciders that holidaymakers find go so well with Normandy's creamy cuisine. Then they come home and wonder why we have all the orchards, so much cider, but no British cork-topped equivalent.

Now some are emerging as we experience a British bottle-fermented cider renaissance. After all, it started in England, preceding the fermented fizz for which France is famous. Englishmen were adding sugar to bottled cider to give it fizz from a secondary fermentation as long ago as 1678. Forty years passed before the first record is found, in 1718, of the sparkling wines of Champagne.

Quality, bottle-fermented British cider (made, unlike British wine, from British fruit varieties) had its heyday in previous centuries, and by the Second World War had been replaced by cider mass-produced in factories. An important part of our heritage seemed lost forever.

In France, in 1961, a group of farmers in the Cambremer region of Normandy switched their cider production from draught to bottle-fermentation. Others followed, and soon French draught farmhouse cider had gone the way of British bottle-fermented – until the revival of our native bubbly.

First of our revivalists was James Lane, of Gospel Green Cyder company in Sussex. His first bottle-fermented vintage was released in 1990, and wine writers Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson were quick to praise his Sussex Cyder. "South-eastern culinary apples, without the tannin of the west-country cider apple, give a far more vinous flavour," says Lane. Annual production is at 9,000 bottles: many grace local wedding receptions, and some were even served at St James's Palace for last year's Radio 4 Food Programme Food Awards.

At Clayhidon in Devon, Alex Hill makes only a couple of thousand bottles each year of his Bollhayes bottle-fermented cider. He's busy running his primary business – Vigo Vineyard Supplies. Nevertheless, his classy ciders have a strong local and national following. Each bottle may contain the fermented juice from up to 40 different cider-apple varieties, all picked in old orchards within a four-mile radius of the cidery. Alex's Bollhayes Cider has a depth of tannic cider apples in both the aroma and the flavour, a bone-dry finish and an overall smoothness from the bottle-fermentation. His Total Eclipse vintage is a little less dry, but equal to the Bollhayes original.

Outspoken and characterful, the cider genius that is Julian Temperley runs Burrow Hill Cider in deepest south Somerset. Surrounded by 130 acres of his own orchards, he puts much of his effort into his famous Somerset Cider Brandy, but is also justly proud of his Bottle Fermented Sparkling Dry Cider, produced using the traditional method of turning the bottles and disgorging the yeast. Temperley's draught cider is a blend of cider-apple varieties ("blending is the cider-maker's art," he says), but his bottle-fermented vintages are made from one of two single varieties – Stoke Red or that king of cider apples, Somerset's own Kingston Black. "Age is crucial too," he explains. "To obtain that desirable biscuity character, the bottles must be left in our cellars for at least 18 months before disgorging the yeast." Combine this with the small, natural bubbles, the fruity and tannic cider apples, and you have truly classic fizz.

The most recent member of this exclusive club of English fruit fizz-makers hails from the perry heartland of Herefordshire. Perry is cider's pear-based cousin, generally paler and more subtle, and thought by some to be the world's greatest drink. For many years, Jean Nowell of Lyne Down Cider has been winning awards for her draught farmhouse perry. Only this year, she has released a bottle-fermented perry, and such has been the acclaim that even the £10 price hasn't slowed demand. The perry pears used in this special vintage are the Hellens Early variety, picked by Jean from an ancient avenue of perry trees planted in 1710 at Hellens House in Much Marcle. Paradoxically, this Herefordshire perry – undeniably a classic 'champagne'-style fizz – is made with fruit from trees older than champagne itself.

Where to buy

Direct: Gospel Green (01428 654120); Bollhayes (01823 680230); Burrow Hill (01460 240782; www.ciderbrandy.co.uk); Lyne Down (01531 660691).

Or a mixed case of all four by mail-order from an award-winning off-licence: Orchard, Hive & Vine, Leominster, Herefordshire (01568 611232; www. orchard-hive-and-vine.co.uk)

Dave Matthews is editor of 'Camra's Good Cider Guide'