Val de Rance Cider

Creperie Bretonne
67 rue de Charonne
75011 Paris
France

You can tell when you've got a good cider in your hands when it tastes like an eruption of apples. The bottle of Val de Rance we tried, on a waitress's recommendation, was their drier one (Bouche Brut, 5%), but you wouldn't know it from the sweetish, slightly carbonated apple drink that appeared before us, alongside four well-used ceramic cups: quaffable wasn't the half of it. I pity people whose experience of cider stretches only to the fizzy, fake varieties found at most British pubs - the kind of commercial compound whose relationship with real apples, if any congress occurs at all, is surely nasty, brutish and short. By happy contrast, when the 450 Bretton apple producers behind Val de Rance insist their cider is the product of a "slow and natural" fermentation process, you can almost smell the devotion.