deadlydarcy – Member
Magners isn’t UK Bulmers in different name. There is a Bulmers over here that only really hit main stores once Magners came big on scene. Magners is still called Bulmers at home. Don’t make the mistake I did and buy Bulmers here thinking is same – tastes quite different.
This.
Different drinks brewed by different companies that once were the same company. After the split, the Irish side was allowed to retain the name Bulmers for the Irish market. They received a large injection of venture capital cash a few years back from some people that realised that they were sitting on a drink with a massive market potential that hadn’t been realised. So when they launched in the UK, they came up with the name Magners (after Willam Magner who first started brewing cider in Clonmel IIRC).
So when the likes of Flashfart, grantway, and the others at the start of the thread who think they’re too good for STR’s particular brew – when you try to get all superior over what is apple juice allowed to ferment, then filtered, carbonated, coloured, and yes, preserved (even a lot of your **** “authentic ciders” are preserevd and coloured (mostly with Sulphites anyway, which are in nearly every fizzy drink in the world) – remember that the likes of Aspalls, WychWood, Westons Organic (LOLz, organic my arse) wouldn’t be sold outside a ten mile radius of the insular brewery that was making them without the money Magners shoved into the marketing of cider to the middle classes around ten years ago. “Oooh, look, we can drink it over ice Tristan. Yes, I’ll have two of those Aspalls in the really authentic bottles, yaw.” The rest of them are just hanging onto their coat-tails.
Here’s a thing – one of my very favourite ciders is Bath Ales Bounders. So there I was thinking, this is a delicious cider for a company that makes good beer – so a bit of digging reveals that there is a cider brewery in Somerset that has only one brand of its own but brews around a dozen brands for other companies that need a cider in their line-ups. Bounders is one of these. But hey, it’s nice so who cares? So the next time you’re gushing over the latest niche alcoholic Appletiser, consider where it may have been brewed.
EVen that flipping Stella stuff is quite nice.
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