Scrumpy Cider
Cider before anyone tamed it
Wild yeast
No Sulphur. Nothing added or removed.
No Shortcuts
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Scrumpy is simply wine made from apples.
A peasant tradition across Northern Europe; known as Sidra in Spain, Cidre Tranquille in France, or Apfelwein in Germany.
No commercial yeast, no sulphur dosing. Just wild yeast doing what it's done for centuries.
Matured a year in vat until it's ready to drink. Just in time to celebrate the next harvest.
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Scrumpy is the English name for wine made from apples — one of the oldest drinks in Europe (and beyond), going by a different name wherever it's made: Sidra in Northern Spain, Cidre Tranquille or Cidre Plat in France, Apfelwein in Germany.
In England it was simply known as Cider until a few hundred years ago when commercial cidermakers started buying up apples, leaving the growers with the "scrumps" or the apples left on the ground.
The traditional method is identical to traditional wine-making — juice is extracted, then fermented and matured for between eight months and a year.
The critical difference is what is not added.
Most commercial wine and cider is heavily sulphured before a lab-cultured yeast takes over for a controlled ferment. Scrumpy skips both — wild, ambient yeast does the fermenting, the wild way it's been done for centuries.
After a year in vat, it's ready. In Europe it's traditionally served straight from the barrel — cloudy, alive, sometimes with a trace of a vinegar "mother" still in it, and with a little natural foam.
We sometimes give ours a light sparge to bring back that barrel-poured foam and a bit of tingle on the tongue.
In Asturias, they don't even bother with a tap — they pour it from above their head and catch it in the glass on the way down.
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