For a white wine drinker, this would be an easy substitution for somebody who doesn’t like beer but doesn’t want to have the high alcohol of a wine go to one of these lovely light, clean, crisp, fresh, acid-driven ciders. And that’s it, that’s the sole extent to what these people think cider is but it’s not their fault because they’ve been told that that’s all cider is.

Third-placed Thatchers Gold also didn’t move from the previous year but saw a decrease in volume sales of from 166,054HL to 135,806HL (18. Thatchers Haze is a cloudy premium cider crafted with specially selected eating apples to create a crisp sweet finish. Regionally, it is the West Midlands, south-west, Wales and Northern Ireland that overtrades with cider compared to the average alcohol consumption of other products. a Somerset cider using West Country apples that it claims is a medium-sweet, zingy cider that it believes is the first alcohol-free cider to be available to the on-trade on draught and it could fill a space in a pub operator’s fridge through its 330ml and 500ml bottles. In the fruit-flavoured sector, Strongbow Dark Fruit remains the market leader with 63% share, a reduction of 3.Data shows while mainstream options cited as the likes of Strongbow, Magners, Carling, Somersby and Kingstone are holding 52. The same pattern is true of lunch with beer and cider clocking up the same figures as food accompaniments while just one percentage point behind total alcohol. We’ve reached peak craft beer… we’re probably already on the other side and those drinkers are going to need something different to keep them drinking through the lines. It’s blended from early Discovery, crunchy Falstaff, ever-popular Gala and sweet Jonagold apple varieties. The change in weather and the fact that we will be out of lockdown will no doubt bring about a change in our usual habits, including going out to eat, drink and generally be merry,” said Dr Sarah Brewer.

And something I’m very keen to try to make the trade and consumer understand is that it’s not just about dry, medium, sweet, it’s about what type of cider is underneath there. Yes, it could well be the Year of the Apple but that’s not to say fruit-flavoured variants will not enjoy success too. The past few years have certainly been no picnic for pubs, bars and restaurants,” says Darryl Hinksman, head of business development at Westons Cider. Cook explains that because cider possesses characters found in wines such as acid, tannins, fruitiness and sweetness, food pairing is a great way to present cider.You can go into virtually any pub today and there will be some fantastic pale ales or bitters on hand-pulls, Guinness on tap, two or three great lagers, at least one IPA and they’ll have a fantastic wine list plus a number of spirits but there might just be one cider on tap and maybe a fruit cider in the fridge.