Kellybrook Champagne Cider

Brewed by Kellybrook Winery
Style: Cider
Wonga Park, Australia

Serve in Flute, Lager glass

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Yeasty aroma (just like champagne) with overripe apples, mustiness and faint urine in the background. Quite dry, again a lot like champagne. Slight bitterness, mild acidity and a nice carbonic, tangy finish. Not enough sweetness or acidity for my liking though. Overall nice but just a bit bland.

Not spectacular but not a total shocker either. This is a straight forward juicy style with plenty of sweet apple running right through the palate but there’s a lick of harder, more bitter fruits that impart a faint touch of seriousness. Could be the alcohol talking here. Whilst a bit simple for the hardcore cider drinker there’s just enough to keep everybody happy and interested. Indeed, upon reflection really quite quaffable.

Poured a pale clear yellow. This had a lovely cider aroma, with some dusty, musky apple. On tasting it was sweet and light. Very easy drinking, and less sickly than some ciders I’ve had lately, but still a little lacking. Alcohol was well contained though.

Bottle. Slight farmy aromas, like hay and stuff like that. Some sharp appleskin notes in the aroma. . Spritzy carbonation, with a clean crisp acidity. Refreshing, balanced. I liked this.

Bottle (Sydney Summer Gathering 2007): There’s something mysteriously soul refreshing about good, simple cider. Such is the case here. It’s analagous to a well placed sorbet course at a great dinner. Visually, you are presented with simplicity; crystal clear, pale green-tinged gold. With a whiff of the nose you know that you can sit back and let the cider do the work for you; nice, gentle barnyard and straw presence and cellars full of apples. There’s no challenge to the palate, as seems right in this case. Nice tart apples and a moderately complex, though not esoteric, dusty barn aspect are straddled by a joyful apple side-palate. There are no riddles here, and no sense that there ought to be any mystery other than that which we create in our own minds. Very nice, simple, elegant, and utterly drinkable.

Nice clear crisp cider, moderately sweet though with a nice touch of sourness to give it some balance. Nice dry finish, making it deceptively easy to consume.

Couldn’t help comparing this to Thorogood’s lovely Misty Morning "apple champagne" as I drank. Without that benchmark, this might have rated a little higher. As it was, it seemed a good, clean champagne cider, simpler than the Thorogoods but a pleasant drinker. Classic translucent straw in colour but with few of the champagne bubble streams that Thorogoods managed to replicate in Misty Morning. Light, dry aroma of tart cider apples and yeast. Nice spritzy mouthfeel - appropriate for this style. Light apple notes with fair sour-sweet balance and a clean finish. Perhaps fractionally sweet. Nothing much wrong with this. (750ml bottle courtesy of Aarleks at the Sydney RateBeer Jan 07 gathering)