Interconnect

This lethal golden elixir

It used to be the taste of shame. Something that could induce nightmare Proustian flashbacks to teenage years of furtive pub trips and buying jumbo supermarket two-litre bottles.

issue 15 September 2007

It used to be the taste of shame. Something that could induce nightmare Proustian flashbacks to teenage years of furtive pub trips and buying jumbo supermarket two-litre bottles. Never go back! And yet we all apparently have: this alcoholic madeleine is cider, and it appears that everyone loves it now, unreservedly, without any embarrassment.

But this lethal golden elixir has evolved a little from the days when it was something to be drunk in parks, by the swings. Now it comes in all varieties, and vintages, and prices, in bottles with pretty labels, and is there to be found in smart gastro-pubs and at swanky dinner parties.

Look at Waitrose, for heaven’s sake, ever the barometer of true social acceptability. Its shelves groan with delicious cider. Organic; Normandy; cider made from single varietal apples; cloudy scrumpy. Duchy Original Cider! You wouldn’t drink that in a pedestrian underpass! And that is before you get to our old friends Bulmers and Strongbow, and our new Irish friend Magners.

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