Taste of the Week

Taste of the Week

Summer may be over
but that's no reason to
leave this cider gem on the shelf.
Well worth a try.

A Look Back at Cahir Cider Celebration

A Look Back at Cahir Cider Celebration

I have to say that I was surprised and delighted with my trip to the Apple Farm in Cahir last weekend to visit the Slow Food Cider Festival. The big surprise was the sheer variety of styles and flavours of the ciders in the tasting tent. Just incredible, everything from dry to sweet and beyond (including that organic Traditional Medieval Honeyed Cider by Highbank Orchards).

I reckon they were all winners but on the day the judges decided on one and they awarded Best in Show to the, by now, well known and very well made Longueville House Cider, a 100% natural medium dry from their own orchards in Cork’s Blackwater Valley. Lots of people think you have to have ice in your cider but producer William O'Callaghan disagrees: “It is best drunk well chilled with no ice and is an ideal accompaniment to fish and meat”.

William, like many of the producers in Cahir, hasn't stopped with just one product. He was also showing his Apple Brandy (Calvados styled). And a very nice one too. This is really rich and mature and, in my opinion, not as fiery as some of its more famous counterparts from Normandy. He also makes liqueurs, must get my hands on some of those!

Longueville House is a busy spot and they have a few interesting events coming up:

• 12th Annual Mushroom Hunt, Sunday 06th & 20th October 2013
• Harvest Lunch & Cider Making Tour, Sunday 27th October 2013;
• Girls Night Out in Style, Pre Christmas Shopping , 21st November 2013;
• and don’t forget the New Year’s Eve Party!

Lisburn’s Tempted? were displaying their new snake logo and “4 tempting flavours”, including the lovely Strawberry that won Gold at the 2012 Irish Food Awards. But, this time, it was their dry cider that was voted Best in Show in that category. Reckon they'll be keeping the Snake. And maybe that Question Mark. Must admit I concentrated on the dry when I visited the MacIvor’s stand but it was their sweet that won the Best in Show in that category.

Great to meet up with Angus Craigie and Simon Tyrrell and taste their excellent cider, the Ballyhook Flier. Orpens and Keeved Cider’s Cockagee (not on general release yet) were other very enjoyable drops.

And then there was one with a difference from Kilmegan, their Wild Elderflower Infused Cider. Really gorgeous and worth a try if you come across it.

Had a terrific chat at the Highbank Orchard stand. Knew some of the products, including their limited edition Proper Cider and the multi-purpose Highbank Syrup. But the Medieval Cider was new to me as was their sweet cider. They are busy busy at Highbank Farm this month and have a day of family fun scheduled for the 29th. Click here for details.

The main focus was rightly on the cider producers but there were a few other stalls as well and, of course, the famed Apple Farm Shop was open. Great to meet up again with Sarah Grubb, husband and children at the Cashel Blue stand.

Amazing professionalism and a genuine courtesy to all as the couple managed to keep three young kids and a stream of interested callers happy. And we left here happy too with a small wedge of their Shepherd’s Store, a hard sheep cheese (you can't store the milk!) made during a good summer. It is a gorgeous cheese, with the trademark creaminess, and I'd advise you to get a wedge for yourself if you get the chance.

Did hear one or two complaints about the five euro (per car) parking charge, mainly because it wasn’t flagged in advance. Then again, there was a nice bonus (which I also hadn't known about). As you paid your seven euro entry fee to the Cider Tasting tent, a large bottle of a Con Traas cider special, called the Crow Black Chicken, a really nice dry cider, was presented to each punter.l

Cider Scope

Cider Fest at The Apple Farm in Cahir




 Looking for something to do this Sunday afternoon? Why not take a trip up to Cahir to the Cider Fest at the Apple Farm and sample some of the amazing ciders available, including the Longueville House, winner of the Best in Show in the presentation and taste category.

Tapas in the Greenroom

The Greenroom at Sage

Called down to Midleton last Tuesday evening to sample the food at the Greenroom, the new all day late night cafe under the ample wing of the adjacent Sage Restaurant. Spotted the 12 Mile Tapas board and immediately saw familiar producers of quality including Woodside Farm, Ardsallagh and Tom Clancy. Five tapas on the board, so we ordered all five.

Next question was what to drink. Easily answered by looking at the next board. Lots of local beers here and also Stonewell cider. Could hardly drink all the beers so settled for the Barefoot Bohemian Pilsner from Eight Degrees and two new Cork beers, both pale ales, the Mountain Man Green Bullet and the Kinsale Pale Ale, each dangerously drinkable!

The tapas are top class, all the dishes perfectly executed and, at seven euro each, very good value. Take the humble Organic courgette and apple fritters with dehydrated goat yoghurt. Didn’t sound the most promising of the five but the tangy yoghurt made the fritters sing.

The Organic baby carrot and Ardsallagh goat cheese with organic leaves and pickled beetroot was another successful combination of taste, colour, flavour and texture. While the cooking here is creative, the food is allowed to speak for itself and this was perhaps best illustrated by the Woodside mini Pork Pie with peas and gravy. The pork flavour and texture were incredible.

The monkfish, coated in the most delicate batter and served with crispy bacon and organic roast garlic aioli, was lyrically light, crunchy and gorgeous and probably CL’s favourite.

For me, the outstanding bite was the first one into those Thomas Clancy free range chicken livers with sourdough and salsa. Honest food so well handled all the way to the table.

The dessert, Red Velvet Cappuccino cake with Bailey’s Ice Cream, was so smooth and seemed designed to put us into a good mood. But, after those brilliant tapas, we were happily already in that zone!

All in all then,  honest food, flawlessly cooked, just perfect. And obviously widely appreciated as the Greenroom was more or less full.

Sage itself was also full. It has gained some extra seating and a different entrance (via the courtyard) after the recent building works that gave us the Greenroom. And the local producers are lauded here in Sage and not just on the tables. On one of the walls there is an excellent photo display of the producers going about their daily work. Well done to Kevin and Réidín for their dedication to their local suppliers!

While it is full steam ahead for Sage, the recently opened Greenroom too has been finding itself quite busy in these early days. It opens at nine and, during the morning, you can pop in for a freshly ground coffee and a freshly baked treat. At lunch time, you’ll have great choices of Salads and Sandwiches and, in the evening, the tapas come into their own.

The new Greenroom, they call it Sage’s little sister, is also proving useful for a pre-meal drink for those booked into Sage or maybe waiting for a table. And, when the sun shines, the courtyard outside is abuzz.

Greenroom details

Opening hours: Tue - Sun: 9:00 am - 11:00 pm.

Address: 8 Main St, Midleton, Co. Cork.

Phone: (021) 463 9682

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/www.sagerestaurant.ie

Festival at Franciscan Well

The Franciscan Well Festival

Enjoyed my afternoon at the Franciscan Well Festival. Loads of choice with beers and cider from all over. The Festival continues tomorrow Sunday from 2.00pm. Get on down!

Top right: Yours truly and Caroline of 8 Degrees; bottom left: Ronan
Brennan of Galway Hooker and Daniel Emerson of Stonewell Cider.

Down and Dirty in the Cidery

Down and Dirty in the Cidery

2012 Apple Crop: the Elstar (normal size but scarce); Dabinett (plentiful enough but smaller than usual).

How do you know a real craft cider-maker?

Wait until September or October (or November, as I did) and check his hands. Has he got what looks like a false tan on the digits? If he has, that is the confirmation you need that he has handled tons of apples, the “tan” created by the tannins in the fruit.

And tannins weren’t the only link between cider and wine, as Stonewell’s Daniel Emerson explained to me in his base in Carrigaline this week. The press he uses is a wine press on hire from a French wine-maker who uses it for just two weeks each year whereas Stonewell use it for six months.

Stonewell have just moved much of the operation from the family home in nearby Nohoval. “The scale is very different here,” said Daniel as he surveyed his expensively assembled “production line”: the forklift, the wash tank, the mill, the maceration tank, the press and the four huge tanks where the cider is finished off.

New base for Daniel Emerson and his Stonewell cidery.

 It has been a year of progress for Daniel and Stonewell. “We sold more than we expected in 2012 and as a result our stocks of the 2011 are low.”

But it wasn’t the best of years for the apple crop of 2012, quite the reverse in fact. The eating apples (used mainly in the medium dry cider) blossomed abundantly in March only to be hammered by the frosts in April. That made them very scarce and expensive.

In the wash.

The bad summer led to a lack of pollination for the cider apples (varieties here are Michelin and Dabinett) and growth was slow. The supply is pretty good though and with the firm also securing a supply of Elstar eating apples, it is full steam ahead in Carrigaline.

There were some yellow Elstar in the system during my visit. They are first washed and then hand sorted before going through the mill and maceration stages. Next the mix, now known as a pomace, visits the presser where the juice is extracted and is then directed to the tanks.

 At the moment, Stonewell makes two types of cider: a medium dry and a dry. If the dry is too dry, they use apple juice rather than sugar to sweeten it. Both are for sale in many counties. Here is a list of stockists.



By the way, with the exception of the glass bottles, everything in a Stonewell cider is Irish – apples, labels, cartons, elbow grease, Atlantic sea air and all! “We don’t use any artificial sweeteners and we definitely don’t add any chemical additives to tweak the natural flavour of our cider.”

Considering the amazing impact the Nohoval cider has had in its short life, I was quite surprised to find such a small team sharing the workload: Daniel himself, his wife Geraldine, Ralph and Eamon, all dedicated to getting the very best out of those precious apples. The small Nohoval facility is not being abandoned and will be used to tweak the juices, both creative and fruit, to come up with a different cider. Watch this space.

For the third time in five days, it has been my privilege to meet people who are willing to take a chance on and in this country, to get down and get their hands dirty, to invest their time and money in giving us better food and better drink. Support them by buying local and buying Irish.

Munster Eat-up at Blair’s Inn

Munster Eat-up at Blair’s Inn

Cheers to the Blairs. Duncan, Richard and their crew put in a tremendous show at the packed Cloghroe inn last evening as they hosted the latest version of the travelling show they've christened #munstertwEATup.

Most of the host restaurants so far have concentrated on the food element but the Blair boys went a step further as they added a craft brew layer with both beer and cider featured. Indeed, the evening started with a delicious Stonewell Cider Kir, sipped by the fireside.

Even the breads had a beer input: Black Rock Stout Brown Bread; Howling Gale Ale, Shandrum Cheese and Chive Bread; and a Cul Dorcha Toasted Walnut and Thyme Bread.  Dungarvan BrewCo, 8 Degrees and the West Kerry Brewery were represented on the night and there was a beer with each course.

Corned beef

 From a choice of starters, I picked the Ummera Smoked Chicken, Glenilen Farm Yoghurt, Celery and Apple Salad and the beer was Beal Ban, a pale English style bitter from West Kerry. A really tasty plateful and a good beer match. We were up and running.

The local theme continued with the next dish: Crispy Pork Belly, Seared Scallops, Stonewell Cider Foam, Apple and Celeriac Puree, McCarthy Black Pudding Crumble and Wild Ballyhoura Mushrooms. Quite a mouthful! All eased down with glass of the popular Howling Gale Ale from 8 Degrees.

I had enjoyed an opening pint of Friar Weisse from the Franciscan Well and that too featured in the Beer and Lime Sorbet. After that refreshing pause, it was on to the main course. We had a choice of three: Venison (Blair's are renowned for their game), Corned Beef or Hake.

Here, along with a glass of the well known Blarney Blonde from the Franciscan Well, I tucked into the Silverside of O’Crualaoi’s Corned Beef on a Leek Champ and cabbage served with a Parsley Sauce. Not a crumb remained!

Checking out Dungarvan Brew-Co's Project X ar Blair's

Also got a sample of the Baked Fillet of Hake on Roasted Peppers with a rustic Gubbeen Chorizo, Tomato and Chickpea Sauce but CL wasn’t as generous with her Helvick Head Blonde Ale from Dungarvan Brewco.

The beers and cider also featured in the gorgeous desert in a pot: Stonewell Cider and Blarney Blonde Ale Snake Bite Bavarois topped with a Carraig Dubh Chocolate Mousse. Smooth stuff and a very appropriate end to a lovely meal.

Clash Of The Ciders

Clash Of The Ciders

Longueville House cider, medium dry, 5%ABV, 50cl, €3.99 at Bradley’s, North Main Street, Cork.

Stonewell cider, medium dry, 5.5% ABV, 50cl, €3.99 at Bradley’s, North Main Street, Cork.

The Longueville House comes in a distinctive squat bottle and its lovely black and gold label is less eye-catching than that on the Stonewell. It has a nice fruity aroma and a rich amber colour in which you see streams of little bubbles constantly rising.

Very pleasant on the palate where the fruit is well balanced, the kind of balance you’d expect to find in a well made West Country cider, a property previously remarked on by the Apple Farm’s Con Traas in a recent newsletter.

The Stonewell’s Celtic design really stands out on the shelf and there is also a huge visual contrast in the glass. The Stonewell colour is so much lighter, more like honey, and again the rising bubbles are obvious.

Its aroma is lighter, more apple-ly, very pleasant indeed. And it is lighter also on the palate, but nowhere near as dry as the LH. And that factor could well make it a favourite with the ladies, well at least with the lady of this house. It is marginally higher in alcohol and that did not go down as well with the lady.

As far as this amateur referee is concerned, my Clash of the Ciders will have to go to a replay (at least one) after this high scoring draw. Final score: 5 stars each. No need to seek a winner here but rather let us celebrate that, in less than 12 months, we have two outstanding craft ciders being made in the county.

If you do want to set up your own tasting match, just call into Bradley’s and get a few of each and see which one suits you. If you want to know more about cider, click on the link below where you’ll find info such as:

“The flavour of cider varies. Ciders can be classified from dry to sweet. Their appearance ranges from cloudy with sediment to completely clear, and their colour ranges from light yellow through orange to brown. The variations in clarity and colour are mostly due to filtering between pressing and fermentation. Some apple varieties will produce a clear cider without any filtration. Both sparkling and still ciders are made; the sparkling variety is the more common.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cider#Appearance_and_types_of_cider

BLAIRS INN: A TOP SPOT

BLAIRS INN
Corned Beef and Cabbage. As a starter! Yes and it proved a really tasty beginning to an excellent weekend meal at Blairs Inn.

What a menu they have there. If you combine the pages from the bar and restaurant menus, I reckon you could be eating there for a year and still have combinations to explore.

And then there are the drinks. There is an excellent wine list, for sure. But also lots of local (and international) drinks including craft beers from Dungarvan, Carlow, Eight Degrees (North Cork) and the new cider sensation Stonewell by the Nohoval Brewing Company.

After a big welcome and a chat with Richard we sat down in the cosy restaurant – they also have a lovely garden dining area – to go through the menus.

My starter was a Warm Tian of O’Crualaoi’s Corned Beef and Cabbage with a creamy Parsley dressing (€7.70). If you get out there, you should really try this. The beef, supplied by the well known Ballincollig butcher, was spot-on as was everything else in this well presented cylinder shaped offering of good local food.

Then on to the main course: Pan fried fillets of Sea Bass on a Chorizo mash with a sundried tomato and rocket dressing and a side plate filled with vegetables and another with gratin potato, both done to perfection. Again, another excellent plateful.

And a big plateful. Indeed, both starter and mains were quite substantial, so much so that I had to forego the dessert.

They helpfully suggest, on the menu, various drinks with each course; the tips for me were a wheat beer with the starter and a dry cider with the fish. I was in the mood for wine and settled on a bottle of their highly recommended an excellent Hopler Gruner Veltliner (Burgenland, Austria) 2009 (€26.95).

You get a great welcome here and also help and advice. Quite a few tourists make their way here and they must be impressed with the local knowledge that the owners and staff so freely dispense.

Lovely food, lovely place and lovely people. A return visit is on the cards. And not just for me.