Thankfully, in 2020, those conditions haven’t repeated themselves, but it meant that Ryan was unable to make his usual Strange Bru, Local Rocket or North Shore, not wishing to dilute the character or integrity of his Highland-grown ciders. Overnight temperatures in the main orchards Ryan uses dipped below zero on the 7th, 12th and 29th of May, devastating the fruit before it had even really begun to grow from blossom. In 2019, the cruel hand of climate struck Ryan a somewhat devastating blow. *Pause, whilst worms are returned to can and Adam is slapped hard on the wrist by editors.* (As a side note, isn’t it a shame that whisky isn’t made from a crop and is thus unable to similarly reflect its growing environment … ?) (Maybe The Proclaimers’ song is secretly about doing a cheeky cider run?) Apples, being a crop and therefore subject to the vicissitudes of environment in general and terroir in particular, present significantly differently across this distance and face significantly different growing and ripening challenges. Lack of longstanding cider culture notwithstanding, it sits some 499 miles from Hereford (as Google Maps tracks it), almost all of those miles due north. Inverness, you may be thinking, is something of an odd place to find a cidermaker. Fortunately, for those of us not lucky enough to live within local delivery limits, his wares are now available through Scrattings and Crafty Nectar. I was thrilled when Ryan opened up online sales on the Caledonian website, and bitterly disappointed when he was so badly let down by delivery companies damaging 30% of his parcels that he has had to shut off couriered parcels again. I’ve since tried several more and, but for one bottle that seemed to have a little TCA taint, I’ve loved every one. I came across them for the first time last year, and was so won over by his Strange Bru that it made its way into my “Essential Ciders” case, published on Malt back in January. And, to my taste, he makes some of the best, most complex and most interesting cider you’ll find in the British Isles. Caledonian is his bit on the side a pet project labour-of-love he runs out of a shed. But had I stayed in Inverness for just a year or two longer I would have had Caledonian Cider.Ĭaledonian Cider was founded and is run by Ryan Sealey, a cidermaker who moved up to Conon Bridge to make whisky for Glen Ord. Several places didn’t stock cider at all I didn’t even come across Scotland’s pretty mealy-mouthed Thistly Cross until I made the move to Dundee. I can’t even remember what I drank in pubs those days, so I dare say it was Strongbow. One thing that I don’t miss is the cider. The summers of my childhood were spent on Arran, but when, in pre-locked-down times, I looked out of the office window, it would be to the Great Glen, the Black Isle and Inverness that my mind’s eye scampered. They were a time for delving into flights of single malt at Fiddlers in Drumnadrochit, for hours rummaging in the book dust and fire-fumes at Leakey’s, for hauling the innards inexpertly from mallards my manager’s brother had shot, for long evenings of Australian wine with Australian housemates, for morning dashes east to Speyside or north to the distilleries of Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. My Inverness months were a time of days off wandering the hills around Loch Ness, getting lost on purpose and re-finding my way in the dark. My fifty minute trudge to work overlooked firth and mountain and pine forest and the overlooked, graffitied, half-embarrassed grave of King Duncan, who Shakespeare had assassinated as an old man by midnight, but who was really cut down as a young man in sunlit battle. I lived in a guest house ten minutes’ walk from Culloden, one of the best-preserved and most tangibly poignant battlefields in Britain. And although I only spent a bare seven months there before shuffling down the A9 for a grim-fated further half-year in Dundee, Inverness remains the only place in the world, beside the house in which I grew up, which thumps in my soul with the ineffable knell of homecoming when I return. Apart from university which is, at best, a dress rehearsal, it was my first real-life move away from the corner of Liverpool’s nature reserve in which I had lived all my life. Once upon a time I lived in Inverness, and I adored it.
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