Cider enthusiast celebrates milestone

Cider enthusiast Roger Lowe, also known as Applejack, celebrates drinking his 2000th different English cider and made tasting notes on each.

Transcript

00:00 My name's Roger, that's my official name, but most people call me Applejack because

00:07 I'm a devout cider drinker. I've been drinking cider for, oh, must be 32, 35 years. But it's

00:16 not the fizzy stuff, it's not Strongbow or Magners, it's traditional still cider. And

00:23 the occasion today is I've just drunk my 2000th different English cider. Ascension, pomegranate

00:33 and hibiscus. The strength is 4% ABV, that's alcohol by volume. And this is my list of

00:42 names. There's 2000 in there, and they're all written out by hand, all in alphabetical

00:51 order because I don't believe in computers and I never will believe in computers. People

00:59 ask me on quite a few occasions, "Can you remember which your favourite is or was?"

01:05 And I say, "Yes, it's this one." It's on the heritage of Worcestershire border, actually

01:10 in Worcestershire, on the River Severn. And the river burst its banks once and the cidery

01:16 was flooded out. And the two brothers, Richard and John, never resumed. I was ashamed of

01:25 that. But that was absolute humdinger, that one was.

01:28 What makes a good cider?

01:30 What makes a good cider? The apples. It's the apples. You can get blended cider. Now,

01:38 the cider makers experienced it can produce a very nice blend. But to me, the best cider

01:45 is like the best whiskey. The single apple varieties, and whiskeys are single malt varieties.

01:52 If you can get a good single apple variety, well, they're the ones really to stick in

02:02 your memory. Or even a double variety. Once a variety reaches three, well, it's a blend

02:09 then. You can just go on and on. But once it's reached three, I call it a blend.

02:15 There is a word cider drinkers use, and it's called wassail. It's a real word, W-A-S-S-A-I-L.

02:23 And it means quite a few different things, depending on the context of how it's used.

02:29 It can be used as a greeting. It can be used as a farewell. And it can also be used in

02:36 celebration, which is my favorite one. And when you're celebrating something, you have

02:42 a group of people, and you must all have cider in the glasses. And after three, you all shout

02:50 at the top of your voice, wassail. And if I'm doing it, I usually say, first time, I

02:57 usually say, is that it? Is that it? So now, come on, we'll do it again. And this time,

03:03 we'll do it properly. So after three, one, two, three, wassail! And all the place goes

03:11 quiet.

03:12 (laughing)