What we do

Here at Easterton Cider, in rural Aberdeenshire, we produce a range of small-batch, dry full-juice craft ciders. Currently, we produce between 1,500 to 2,500 litres a year. Our ciders are cold-fermented, long matured, and unfiltered. They’re generally bottle-conditioned for light carbonation.

We press the apples in our rack and cloth press. It’s hard work, but the juice yield is high, and the longer pressing process allows the pomace to gently oxidise, giving greater richness of colour and depth of flavour to the finished ciders.

We also give the ciders time to fully mature before going to market — generally, there’s a minimum of 18 months between pressing and sales. Like wine, our cider continues to develop in bottle for several years.

Where do we get the apples?

Our apples come from a number of sources. We began planting our cider apple trees in 2013 and now have somewhere north of 100 trees in the ground. They were planted in batches, the first of which are now approaching full productivity. We currently get a few hundred kilos a year from these.

We’re also fortunate to have access to a number of old trees and orchards across Aberdeenshire, where we can get large amounts of dessert and culinary apples most years. Finally, we import a few bulk bags of bittersweet cider apples from Herefordshire, just to ensure our ciders have sufficient tannins to give the familiar bite and astringency associated with good cider.

In time, the aim is to become fully self-sufficient in bittersweet fruit — we hope to reach that point within the next few years. We always aim for transparency regarding which apples are in our ciders.

Straight-talkin’ cider ; made reasonably well

Here at Easterton Cider, we believe good cider is very much worth making — and often hard to find. Compared to the mass-produced, over-sweetened, hyper-filtered, mainly tapwater ciders that dominate the large-scale retail supply chain, a full-juice, unfiltered cider that’s been given time to find its own way has depth of flavour, aroma, and texture that sets it apart as a drink of quality.

We try not to gild the lily when describing our ciders and processes, and keep things fairly factual. We find the ciders can speak for themselves