Pear cider tops NZ Fruit Wine & Cider Awards

A bottle-fermented pear cider has been named Champion Cider at the New Zealand Fruit Wine & Cider Awards.

Perfect Pear 2018 by The Cider Factorie in Tauranga took the top award at a pared-back version of the Awards held in Hawke’s Bay on Friday night. It is the first time a pear cider – or “perry” – has scooped the top honour since the inception of the awards in 1984.

Judges said Perfect Pear, crafted in the methode traditionelle style, was well-crafted and “simply delicious”.

“We just kept coming back to it,” said head judge Merophy Hyslop. “It had a really nice texture, lovely bubbles, good complexity and length. It’s not easy to create pear cider – you need some real skill to be able to make a cider like that.”

The top fruit wine in the country was named as Excaliber 2018, a mead wine made by Wildfern NZ in Upper Hutt. Rich and sweet, the dessert-style honey wine is made from a blend of mānuka and other native honeys, giving it a vanilla and soft caramel flavour.

The category judges said that mead has been making a comeback both here and overseas. “Mead as a category was much bigger this year and Excaliber really stood out,” said Hyslop. “It’s an excellent example of a traditional, classic-style mead and really refined.”

The Awards had been planned to coincide with The NZ Cider Festival, which was due to be held in Hastings the same weekend, but has been postponed to February next year due to COVID-19. This year’s awards were held in front of a small crowd, with most cider makers joining by Zoom.

This year, there were 138 entries, a significant 29% increase on the 107 last year. In total, there were 12 trophies awarded, 18 gold medals, 47 silver medals and 54 bronze medals. Reflecting the burgeoning seltzer market, the awards this year also included a seltzer category for the first time.  

New Zealand Fruit Wine & Cider Awards  2021

OVERALL CHAMPIONS (selected from the trophy winners in each category)

NZ Champion Cider – Perfect Pear 2018, The Cider Factorie (Tauranga)

NZ Champion Fruit Wine – Excaliber 2018, Wildfern NZ (Lower Hutt)

TROPHY WINNERS : CIDER

Best Modern Cider – Old Sod 2021, Peat Cider Company (Hamilton)

Best Traditional Cider – Totally Oaked 2021, Elemental Cider (Ōtaki)

Best Pear Cider (Perry) – The Pict 2020, Paynter’s Cider (Hastings)

Best Cider with Berry Fruit – Old Mout Boysencider, Redwood Cider Co. (Nelson)

Best Cider With Non-Berry Fruits – Mata Golden Kiwi Cider 2021, Aotearoa Breweries (Whakatāne)

Best Cider with Spice, Botanicals or Honey – Oatmeal Cookie 2021, Bohemian Cider (Matakana)

Best Bottle-Fermented Cider – Perfect Pear 2018, The Cider Factorie (Tauranga)

TROPHY WINNERS: FRUIT WINE


Best Fruit Wine – Apple and Feijoa Fruit Wine, Lothlorien Winery (Warkworth)

Best Fortified Fruit Wine or Fruit Liqueur – Feijoa and Honey Liqueur, Lothlorien Winery (Warkworth)

Best Mead – Excaliber 2018, Wildfern NZ (Lower Hutt)  

W: For full results, including medal winners, visit cidernz.com