Cider Spotlight!

Winchester Ciderworks Va-Ginga!

$12.99 for the 16oz four-pack cans
English Style Cider with Ginger

We love a good cider with ginger, and we really liked Winchester Ciderworks’ English Style, off-dry cider Malice. So, when we said, “What else does Winchester Ciderworks have?” and saw this ginger-atious number, we had to try it. Turns out it really was the merger of our two likes because the Va-Ginga! (as in “Virginia Ginger!”) is the Malice with ginger added to it.

So, for the Malice, Winchester Ciderworks cider maker, Stephen Schuurman, makes the kind of off-dry cider he had known in his native southern Britain. He uses five different apple varieties from Frederick County, slowly ferments them, and then lets the fresh cider age for at least a year. For the Va-Ginga!, Schuurman takes pre-pasteurized Malice and adds fresh-pressed ginger root to it.

The ginger taste lies atop the core cider like a favorite blanket thrown over a comfortable bed. Tucked in with hospital corners, it blends in providing a welcome additional layer to the Malice. Our time trawling BBC TV has taught us that England historically has had “issues” with their gingers. The Va-Ginga! makes that tension even more inexplicable than usual, since this English ginger goes down just fine.