Ciders for a Chippy Tea
With special thanks to Dick Withecombe for the inspiration.
Cod and chips
I can’t remember exactly at what point in my eight-year stumble through the wine industry I was told that the best food and wine pairing I would ever be privy to was champagne with fish and chips, but I strongly suspect it was the first week. The bright fizz and citrusy sharpness, I was reliably informed, would cut through the oil and salt of the fish and chips, and the toasty biscuitiness (impeccably immortalised here by Rachel Hendry as “like a breakfast buffet at a fancy hotel”) would sashay over the top.
Whilst I’m not in a financial position to have tested this theory more than once or twice, I am also far too Times-New-Roman a person to entirely thumb my nose at the asserted classics, so for the most yardstick chippy tea of all it’s to traditional method (also known as champagne method) cider that I’m turning. Little Pomona Brut Crémant is a multi-vintage blend of mainly barrel-aged Ellis Bitter and Foxwhelp apples, whilst Chalkdown (whatever vintage you find) is a blend of cooking eating apples that is given years before release to develop that breakfast buffet energy atop its lemony zing. Either will make you feel as special as your chippy tea evening demands.
Haddock and Chips
Either as a consequence of time living in Scotland or dedicated contrarianism or simply enjoying the word ‘haddock’ or all of the above, this has always been my personal fish and chips preference. At an especially difficult point of my life I lived near a chip shop called The Silvery Tay that I haven’t been back to since. They did fish in breadcrumbs, not just batter, included a wedge of lemon by default and their Haddock and chips defied superlatives for less than five quid a go. I still didn’t have the budget for it very often, but once or twice I sat with a box of its greasy gloriousness on a nearby crumbling wall overlooking the eponymous river and although the world seemed no more surmountable, for fifteen minutes or so it was burnished with a gentle gleam.
Since Haddock is the choice of the forthright and discerning I have stuck to my acidic guns but gone for a little more chutzpah. Cwm Maddoc’s Foxwhelp, Pig’s Face & Tom Putt 2017 blend is pin-bright, mesmerisingly aromatic and tastes like wild strawberries and the tinkling of rubies. Whereas Bereziartua Edición Gourmet, from the Basque country, is the meeting place for fresh pineapple and haribo tangfastics. I’ve included it because it’s the last Basque cider that I have left, but almost anything from Spain is your friend here, as their ciders tend by default towards sharpness. I hope that their vibrancy and verve lift your spirits as emphatically as they will your haddock’s flavours.
Pie and Chips
If we are after chippy pie then we are in the mood for hearty. We want gravy so thick you could walk across it and a crust that sneers at any cutlery short of a mallet and chisel. So in this instance we are abandoning our “acidity please” philosophies and embracing richness and tannin.
Specifically, something keeved. Fat, mouthfilling cider that stands a chance against the gravy. Something that offers tannin without tears and a balanced touch of sweetness to offset the pepper. (Because obviously there’s pepper, because if there isn’t pepper then you’ve ordered the wrong pie.)
If you are having pie and chips outside in summertime then I recommend pairing it with Gregg’s Pit Dabinett & Yarlington Mill, because this cider is what sunshine tastes like. Dabinett’s orangey, big-grins juiciness and Yarlington’s wide, ripe apple fruit and baking spice will be more than a match for any filling you’d care to name. But if it’s a colder day and you’re inside in your squashiest chair, agonising over whether to turn the heating on, then pick Smith Hayne’s Special Reserve. Darker, richer, a little more intense, it’ll wrap itself around you, the pie and everything else and tell you not to worry again until the last crumb’s been mopped up.
Sausage and Chips
I was a late bloomer where fish and chips were concerned, and before I encountered the Silvery Tay, this was my chip-shop safety net. The combination of sausage (vegetarian or otherwise) and potato is food at its most simple and comforting, and in the year of grace 2021, “simple and comforting” is as about as aspirational as adjectives can be.
Battered or otherwise, if we’re talking chippy sausage and chips then we’re talking fat and we’re talking protein and that means we need a bit of bold and grippy tannin to chew its way through them. But we can’t overlook acidity entirely for the oil and far-related reasons we have so scientifically laid out above. So we need, in short, the sort of cider that can do a little bit of everything.
On which basis I would start with Oliver’s 2017 Dry. I have no proof of this, but I’d wager a lot of someone else’s money that it contains a glug or two of the Foxwhelp variety, and that nip of bright acidity sings through the tannins and developed body brought by the bittersweets in the blend. Adventurers, mavericks and those who just enjoy winding up the “apples only” set might plump instead for Pilton’s Pomme Pomme. A juicy, zesty, life-affirming union of pristine, tropical quince and cheerfully rounded keeved cider that will lend a machete to this meal’s proteiny thicket whilst enfolding you in a generous hug for the rest of the evening.
Chicken and Chips
Chicken and chips is something I think of constantly. It was what my housemate and I would buy compulsively on our totter home from an ill-judged night out at University, a starchy, juicy, spicy basket of soul-cheering stodge that said “don’t worry, the next two miles of walking will be a doddle.” It was what we’d want on empty afternoons to offset bad films and beanbag chair lethargy. I haven’t had it in far too long and I miss it tremendously.
Chicken, spicy or not, calls for a different sort of drink to the proteins we’ve discussed thus far. It’s denser than fish so we still want that tannin, but the slice’n’dice of acidity’s what’s really needed. So first up should be Ross on Wye’s Thorn perry 2019. A chomp of tannin is overwhelmed by a mouthwatering laser of elderflower and cut grass and lime acidity that’ll gnash through your chicken in nothing flat. Burrow Hill’s Bottle Fermented Stoke Red will do a similar job, fizz and acidity skewering the meat juices whilst gorgeous blood orange and wood spice flavours cough loudly to remind you that your drink is every bit as important as your food thank you very much.
Just Chips
I haven’t had a proper chip since February 2020. I mean the sort of chip worth paying attention to. A chip shop chip; golden brown on the outside and not fluffy on the inside, but somehow velvety; the natural evolution of a hash brown. I have long-since accepted that I will never have skill nor utensils to produce a satisfactory chip at home, and so they have become held as a little looked-for signpost of some sort of normality returning.
The “just chips thanks” order is the hardest to pair because its simplicity is lost from the second you reach for the sauce bottles (without which your chips mean nothing.) This is the chippy’s mast to which your colours must be hammered. Salt, vinegar, mayonnaise, ketchup, brown sauce and gravy, each decision and combination fraught with weight and significance, not to mention acid and sugar and e-numbers. The chip, ordered solo, is a blank canvas onto which you paint your own stylings and as such I have chosen ciders with the heft and depth and smoke and assertion to go toe-to-toe with whatever your preference may be.
Yarlington Mill is the perfect apple for this job. With its enfolding duvet of “you’ll be ok” flavour and gentle crack of spice, it’s the malic answer to Shiraz. Heck’s in Somerset bottled a tremendous Keeved version last year, full of baked apple and cinnamon and brown sugar that’ll set the crown on every chip. But almost any Yarlington you’ll find will do you nicely. Attacking from a different angle is Ascension’s Laphroaig Cask. The smokey influence of the peated Islay whisky barrels will not only cut through the chip fat, but will add an extra dimension to your condiments of choice whilst standing up to whatever confluence of condiment makes you happiest
Chips in Curry Sauce
Strictly you could argue that curry sauce counts as one of the permissible condiments in the previous entry, and certainly you could pair it with either of the last two suggested ciders and hear no complaint from me. But curry sauce merits special mention because cider is The Best Drink To Pair With Spice and ought to be separately and properly recognised as such.
Pairing wine and spice is a thankless task. Without going too far into the organoleptic science (please don’t make me – I am bad at it) spice accentuates your perception of alcohol and reduces your perception of fruit. Ideally you want a drink with a lower abv, that is perhaps a shade off-dry, that has just the right amount of zest and that is so joyfully fruit-filled that it laughs in the face of heat.
The Discovery apple is your friend here, and you’ve no better friend than Nightingale’s “Wild Disco”. Cider’s answer to the “juicy banger”, it’s a gleeful, lightly-sparkling gulp that tastes like lying on the grass drinking cherryade. This pairing requires three cans – one that you will have finished before starting on the food, one to crush alongside it and the third as a palate-cleanser afterwards and because you deserve it. If you feel tremendously fancy, try to find yourself a bottle of Eve’s Deridder from New York State. It describes itself as having “jangly acidity”, which makes me think of drinking appletiser on childhood pub trips and which springboards its juicy fruitiness over whatever opposition the curry sauce can muster.
Chip Butty
Your mileage may vary – perhaps your ‘butty’ is a roll, a sandwich, a bap (I’ve even heard ‘batch’ – it takes all sorts [Editors note: you watch yourself Wells]) but fundamentally we can agree that the inclination to stuff potatoey carbohydrate between layers of bready carbohydrate is one of the few unifying tenets of modern Britain.
Strictly speaking a chippy tea butty (my article, my word) ought properly to be spread with so much butter that the bread’s an afterthought, but dairy and I will never be bosom companions so my authority regarding this pairing must be taken with a pinch of salt. Where we can all agree is that the chip butty only counts if, when pat you its pillowy top-layer, the flour billows upwards in a cloud of nostril-tickling proportions.
This flour, in tandem with the aforementioned sauce-bottle conundrum, makes the chip butty another tricky one to pair, requiring a cider with the richness to spar with your preferred dressing as well as the brightness to slice through and wash down the powdery clag that has just spectacularly coated your mouth. North and South, from Scotland’s Caledonian, should be your first port of call. It blends green, fresh eating apples from near Inverness with darker, richer Somerset bittersweets and a wisp of whisky cask smoke and is another that you will likely need at least a second bottle of on hand. Alternatively open one bottle of Ross on Wye x Nightingale’s Dabinett-Bramley collaboration. The combination of sharpness and tannin and thunder and zing will wash down your starch so beautifully that you won’t care that I’ve technically cheated and named both of those cideries twice now.
