Things have been busy in the back rooms at Snake Gully, with the first lot of still cider bottled and ready for sale.  We've been going to some local markets and festivals, taste testing to see how it goes and so far, people who know their cider have been complimentary (labelling aside... but more on that later).

The still cider is a dry, traditional style cider - close to Scrumpy but not quite as young and ... shall we say ... rough as a farmhouse Scrumpy would be.

Now the dry bit is important - we don't make a sweet / sugary cider - it's not possible to do that without fiddling around with the fermentation process or industrialising the whole thing, and that's not we're about - our cider is made with traditional methods and slowly with more and more traditional apple varieties.  Of course, if you have a desperately sweet tooth, you can make up a drink similar to a Shandy - where you mix the cider with a lemonade or something equally sweet to your own taste.  In fact, that combination, on a hot evening is ideal and even us die hard real cider fans have been known to do that when the weather's hot enough to cook an apple on the tree.

Now traditional apple varieties - our current cider batches are made with a combination of apples designed to get some depth in the taste.  We're using some heritage varieties, some cider varieties, and some more commonly available commercial varieties of apples.  As our (and our growing partner's) trees grow and give us more fruit then the mix of the apples used will be adjusted by the cider makers to keep the taste experience up.  Of course, this means more than beer or even wine, there's some variation in the taste as the apples have a direct bearing on the outcome of the cider.

And finally.. the thorny issue of the labels.  Who would have thought that making the cider would be the least of our problems - designing the labels would be something that keeps us all up at nights.  So far we've been trying a few different layouts of labels to see what people think and it's clear that there's a winner for a different option at just about every venue that we go to.  So we're probably going to have to admit that our skill set is somewhere other than graphic artistry and get some help in.  Don't panic if your labels vary on the product that you purchase - it's still the same cider - we're just having trouble making a decision

Now - finally - our online store is now up and running.  People in Australia can now order their cider, vinegar and other products as they become available from our website directly:

http://www.snakegullycider.com/store

Regards from Mabel and everyone else at Snake Gully Cider