The Cider Barn, Draycott

Oh my fucking tits, what have we walked into?

I can't recall a time in my life when the expectation/reality matrix has been fucked any harder than this. Except some jobs I've done. And some Tinder dates, de rigueur.

I was in Zummerzet for Zoider. And who could possibly resist a specialist cider bar at the foot of the Mendip Hills (immortalised by Adge Cutler and The Wurzels). This is an easy win. Local, natural, traditional cider. Some people come to Somerset purely for the cider. I know I fucking did. Not exactly a captive market, but a fairly reliable one surely? Sell a quality product, and don't take the piss - people will keep coming back for more. 

The Cider Barn in Draycott however, have taken a different tack. Imagine if you will a specialist real ale bar that served Doombar, Greene King IPA, and Caffreys. Imagine going to a fancy wine bar that had Echo Falls, Blossom Hill, and Blue Nun. You would scream, and quite rightly, "I have been massively fucking misled!" And that is fraud. But I'm not a vindictive person, so I won't be pressing charges.

The salient facts are these. It's a giant Anderson Shelter in the middle of nowhere, but on a really busy A road. I believe the American nomenclature would be a Roadhouse. All the clientele (bar us) have clearly driven here, but that's to be expected in the sticks where there's a relatively relaxed attitude to drink driving. 

I grew up in the countryside, I knew drink driving went on, I saw it every day. Some regulars would leave open certain farm gates to provide an escape route across fields where the police cars couldn't follow. Regulars died. But it never seemed like it was part of a pub's business plan. At The Cider Barn you feel that it is, or they're selling a lot of fucking Kaliber. And don't pretend that it's something you can't control, it very much is.

But let's go back to my visit. Stepping through the UPVC I was deafened. The piped music was utterly fucking repugnant. Fuck knows how you would actually categorise it, but it was fucking awful. Imagine some gakked up record company exec using voice activated AI and just screaming "HARROWING HIGH TEMPO AUTOTUNED DANCE MUSIC!" and that's that. Listening to this music should automatically rescind your right to listen to music. You don't deserve it.

The noise was utterly unbearable. Even if I'd been in a club in Ibiza at 3am I probably would have found it a bit OTT - for a specialist cider pub in rural Somerset it was both painful and incongruous. Enough to ruin my visit on it's own - but at least there would be some decent cider on?

No. Not a fucking chance.

They had fucking Lilley's. This is all I need to know, to know that this is a place not serious about cider.

Lilley's is to cider, what a box of bran flakes is to the Dishoom breakfast. They are absolute grifters, who in an ideal world would be prevented from even using the word cider for their abhorrent, weak, syrupy, infantile piss. They make an alcopop, that's all. They are beneath contempt, and I don't fucking understand how they sleep at night given the atrocious standard of dire piss that they purvey, full of sugar and sulphites, when people are working their knuckles to the bone to make high quality real cider.

Oh, I know how they sleep at night. On a mattress stuffed with fucking cash.

Take a load of apple juice concentrate, who cares where from, water it down, add some lab yeast, ferment for a week, then just dive into your Scrooge McDuckian money pool and give up on any principles you may once have held. 

With that level of avarice, why not just buy up a load of apple squash, an IBC of methylated spirits, and just give the people what they want? Or cocaine? No one knows what actually goes in it, but people seem to want it and the margins are good. Good luck to you Lilley's.

The moment I saw Lilley's I deflated. I knew this would not be the pub of our dreams. I checked the other offerings. Thatchers were dominant. To go back to metaphor, like going to a cheesemonger and seeing they had a special offer on Tesco Value mild cheddar. You'd run a mile. The only reason I didn't run a mile at this point was that I'd already walked half a mile from my campsite, and if I'd run a mile I'd still be in the middle of fucking nowhere.

So I persevered. There were two Rich's ciders available. Now I had already been warned off Rich's, but it's always worth asking for the best bit of offal at the butchers. They weren't flavoured with vivid syrup like mango or lemon meringue pie, or cherry coke bubblegum ice-cream or any of that mad shit like most of the rest of the offerings on the bar. And there was a small chance it could be real cider! 

Alas, I think it's unlikely - bang on 6% abv, what are the chances? Just like the other Rich's cider I had a couple of days ago. Utterly incredible that they can press and blend their apples regardless of origin or externalities and it always ends up at a consistent 6%. Literally incredible. The same goes for their 4.5% wank too.

Either make proper cider or fuck off. Hang your heads in fucking shame. Cidermakers should have some pride, and the shit that a lot of these are pumping out is utterly shameful.

I'm not being naive, I know this is standard practice in pubs up and down the UK, but when I deliberately come out of my way to a place that calls itself The Cider Barn it is utterly unforgivable.

The cider was complete shite, I attempted to console myself by ordering one of their "Stone-baked sourdough pizzas." Now, this is difficult to fuck up, surely?

Well Shirley, fuck it up they did. Good and proper.

I was very privileged as a child to get a varied diet with lots of home cooked food, but obviously there were plenty of frozen pizzas and oven chips involved too. I was content with this arrangement, as were my parents as it gave them two hours of their evening back.

The pizzas would always be the supermarket own brand ones (I'm not writing poverty porn here, I just think there was nothing else available when I was growing up) so imagine one of those straight out of the oven, but it has been utterly drenched in oil. In 2025. Exactly which oil, I cannot say. But it might be worth asking Duckhams. 

My god it was fucking grim. We just left.

Grim food.

Grim cider.

Grim music.

Grim venue.