Cidre Breton — One Iconic Cider From Both Sides Of The Channel
Rachel
〰️
Rachel 〰️
Those in the UK who say size doesn’t matter have clearly never encountered a litre bottle of Cidre Breton.
Its magnitude in comparison to its puny 750ml relations is an immediate distraction, the amber glow of its sturdy stature calling to you like a siren, a gesture of generosity beckoning you to come closer. There’s something quite crass and phallic about the shape itself, a clear glass bottle resembling that of old school milk packaging or the simplistic plastic that line the soft drink aisle in the supermarket. A gold screwcap crowns the top.
The label is equally as schematic, a murky brown imprinted on an ecru background, a tonal response to the liquid the clear glass contains, whose lava lamp glow blushes a hazy, terracotta-hued sunset. The name Cidre Breton is scrawled at the header of the label, a circular stamp signals the contents are a fermented apple juice, and illustrated below sits a figure on a wooden barrel drinking from a cup, colloquial and pastoral in their appearance, workers busy themselves by tending to a horse and cart behind them.
I break the gold seal of the bottle and a white wave of carbonation rushes to greet me, frothing and fizzing with the anticipation of release. Content under pressure, the label reads, and I smile at the poetry that comes with translation as I pour myself a glass.
On the nose there’s the immediacy of some late summer hay and ripe pineapple. Then, as I take a sip, the tannic, tropical texture of dried mango and passionfruit seeds reveals itself, only to be softened by the appearance of juicy stone fruit, the burst of a peach dripping down your chin or the enthusiasm of apricots in August. The cider is warm and sun-soaked and tender. It tastes textured, melodious, happy, like the soft, seductive clumsiness of a first kiss. I drain my glass, eagerly pour myself another, and turn my attention back to the bottle.
A fine French cider, the label informs me, produced in the heart of Brittany where cider has been made for generations.
Anaïs
〰️
Anaïs 〰️
I raised an eyebrow and smiled when I first read what was written on that label, as it contains one truth, and one little white lie.
Cidre Breton is technically not made in Brittany. Kerisac cidery is located in Guenrouët, in Loire-Atlantique, which is part of the Pays de la Loire region. Historically, the area was attached to Brittany from 851 to 1956, when French administrative regions were created, and Loire-Atlantique was excluded. Since then, many people have been pleading for a reunification of Brittany that includes it, while others think it doesn’t belong.
When it comes to cider, it's a whole other thing. The Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) “Cidre de Bretagne/Cidre Breton” includes Guenrouët and other towns in Loire-Atlantique, which means Kerisac is well within its right to write it on their labels—to be fair, “Cidre Ligérien” wouldn’t mean a lot to most. Brittany is France’s biggest cider producing region after all.
What is definitely true, is that this cider has been made for generations. In 1920, Jean-Marie Guillet stopped travelling from farm to farm with his portable cider press—at the time, every farmer in the area had apple orchards and wanted to make juice or cider with it—and decided to settle in Guenrouët. Kerisac grew, buying all the adjacent lands it could to expand, but never moved its production site from the town center. Today, it employs 48 people.
Illustrations by Alexandra Hochreiter
Laurent Guillet, regional brand manager and Jean-Marie’s great-grandson, is the fourth generation working for the cidery. When he shares how the family business came to life, he spares no detail, like how his grandfather had to step up when he was just a child.
“In 1935, Jean-Marie tore his hand off after getting it stuck in a millstone,” he says. “His other arm was already handicapped after getting hit by shrapnel [during WWI] in 1914.” Louis, 14, took back the mill and Edmond, Laurent’s grandfather, inherited the cidery at only 13 years of age.
His three sons followed, including Laurent’s father, who joined the family business in 1963. This was not a good period to be making cider. Reparcelling started in Brittany in the 1950s, taking a toll on orchards. By the 1980s, the region had lost 80% of them, as farmers were forced to tear them down, or received bonuses to do so—in October 1987, a violent hurricane destroyed 35% of the remaining apple trees.
During that period, cideries like Kerisac fought to keep orchards from getting annihilated and preserve apple varieties (hundreds were lost along the way, which also brought a form of standardisation to cider), while cider consumption was crumbling year after year, in favour of wine.
In 1996, Laurent started as sector manager, despite his parents wanting him to find a more prosperous industry to work at. And just a few years later, due to health issues, Laurent’s father decided to sell Kerisac.
This became the biggest criticism made to the business: Kerisac has been owned by Agrial, an agricultural cooperative in Normandy, since 1999, losing its independence in the process. “We didn’t sell to Agrial,” Laurent rectifies. “We sold to cidrerie Écusson who then sold to Agrial a year later, when the owner died.”
Agrial works with 12,500 farmers and is the biggest cider producer in France, owning the three biggest French cideries: Loïc Raison, Écusson and Kerisac, respectively making 32, 26 and 10 million bottles per year—in 2018, Agrial acquired Aston Manor, the company behind brands such as Frosty Jacks and Crumpton Oaks. In recent years, the cooperative has made some controversial decisions in the cider world, by tearing out apple orchards in Normandy.
Rachel
〰️
Rachel 〰️
To understand the phenomenon of Cidre Breton in the UK you must first understand the phenomenon of The French House.
Situated in Dean Street, Soho the Grade II listed pub was originally named The York Minster, founded by German Christian Schmitt in 1891, and was eventually renamed The French House over a century later in 1984. A fire to its clerical namesake, the cathedral of York, revealed that for some time cases of wine meant for the pub had been delivered to the divine premises instead and a name change was enacted as a result.
Known to be frequented by the likes of Charles de Gaulle, Dylan Thomas and Francis Bacon, as well for only serving beer in half pints after an alleged fight broke out in the early 1900s involving smashed pint glasses, the French House has a history as eclectic as its ambience. Adding to its roster of alumni, in 1992 Fergus and Margot Henderson opened the dining rooms of the pub, serving food until Fergus left two years later in 1994 to open St. John in London’s Smithfield, alongside Trevor Gulliver.
Today, Trevor is not just one of the founders of St. John, but perhaps one of the most influential restaurateurs in recent British history. Alongside championing their infamous nose to tail approach to cooking and dining, Trevor has also advocated for, what he calls, true cider. And true cider to St. John is Cidre Breton, a cider they would drink in their time at The French House and with which they’ve been pouring in their St. John establishments ever since.
““It was obviously quite particular, but I suppose in those days, people thought St. John was quite particular.””
“We’ve had it on our list since day one,” Trevor tells me. “It came in a perfect size because it was a litre. So if you give someone a nice straight half pint glass, they can sit with their friend and pour away as they wish and have a good refreshing drink. It was obviously quite particular, but I suppose in those days, people thought St. John was quite particular.”
A testament to the particularity of both that they’re still standing strong today, and Cidre Breton is still being poured in their restaurants over three decades later.
“People enjoyed drinking it and they couldn’t get it anywhere else,” Trevor explains. “Nowadays, whenever we can, we champion what I call true cider. We always have at least a couple of ciders and I say, very simply, that if I can see the tree I want to drink the cider… And the other thing is that, in terms of us cooking and eating what we cook, nothing could be better.”
Is there a particular St. John and Cidre Breton pairing diners should look out for?
“Pork is an obvious one, I know our logo, it makes a lot of sense,” Trevor jokes. “And I was chatting with the team the other day and I just said, have you ever thought what this is like with a treacle tart? No rules are being written, and we can do what we want to do and the versatility of cider means you suddenly begin to think: aha!”
And it’s not just St. John that has been influenced by the drinks list of The French House.
When browsing the Shop Cuvee website I note the copy declares Cidre Breton to be “the best cider in the world” and I wonder why that is.
“We always used to joke about it being the best value drink in Soho,” Brodie Meah, co-founder of Shop Cuvée tells me. They currently sell litre bottles of Cidre Breton for £8.40.
“And this is how we started stocking it, we just personally loved it. I still remember when I first moved to London, going to The French House. And that was our joke, yeah? I’d just moved to London, it's really expensive, and like millimetre for millimeter this was the best deal in town.”
Anaïs
〰️
Anaïs 〰️
On French supermarket shelves, Kerisac 750 ml dark green champagne bottle with a muselet on top of it (the wire cage that fits over the cork) is the mental image of cider for French people.
The label, which imitates old parchment, shows a man wearing a chapeau breton and holding a bolée, the traditional vessel to drink cider from in Brittany—specifically pairing it with savoury buckwheat galettes, another regional pride. It has that sweet, warm and comforting apple taste with just enough of a rustic touch to not lose French people's sweet palate with too much bitterness. All of that for around €3.00 (£2.58) a bottle.
“We know we won’t be served in gourmet restaurants,” Laurent says, well aware of how the brand can be perceived by French consumers. “We’re a cider for traditional crêperies and supermarkets and we’re fine with it.”
By becoming a reference of the product they’re making, Kerisac went on the path many successful businesses that keep growing end up in: when they’re seen as too big, too industrial, not so local anymore. For the new generation of cidermakers, Kerisac became a norm to stand out from, rather than a model to aspire to.
““We know we won’t be served in gourmet restaurants....We’re a cider for traditional crêperies and supermarkets and we’re fine with it.””
“They kept cider alive for a long time, you can’t take that away from them,” cider expert Lionel Gravé says. “But by doing so, they also gave it a stereotypical image of a cheap and easy-to-make product.”
In Koaven, his cheese and cider shop near Rennes where he sells around a hundred different cuvées to pair with cheese, Kerisac is nowhere to be found. “We’re only working with unpasteurised and naturally effervescent ciders and Kerisac does not meet these criteria, so we’ve never considered selling it,” he says. “This has nothing to do with the quality, but we also don’t sell products that you can find in supermarkets.”
The same goes for Erwan Giré, owner of Sistrot, a restaurant and cider shop in Quimper. “We don’t work with industrial cider makers,” he says, citing Kerisac but also Kerné, another historic cidery closer to his restaurant.
Laurent doesn’t disregard the new generation of cider producers and says he’s interested in what everyone is bringing to the industry. But he can’t help but take some criticism personally: “Being a big cidery doesn’t erase my family history and what they contributed,” he says with a sigh. “There’s always someone who is going to be more local than you anyway.”
Erwan agrees: “We must not disregard that [cideries like Kerisac] have done a lot of work spreading the good word about cider,” he says. “We might not have cider in Brittany anymore if they hadn’t kept and preserved orchards. The rest, being a big industrial cidery, are economical choices, which I understand.”
Rachel
〰️
Rachel 〰️
A note on translation:
When an object moves from its country to another it is no longer home and known. It now resides in a place of foreignness, a foreignness that can be rejected or fetishised depending on who encounters it. Either way, a translation is now in order.
“True translation is not a binary affair between two languages but a triangular affair,” writes John Berger. French is not simply and directly translated to English, but a new meaning becomes attached, one that depends on the emotions and impulses of the translator. How a person relates to France, to foreignness, to England, will all contribute to form new interpretations and definitions that may have little to do with its host’s initial meaning. It may change the word entirely. It may even be engineered this way.
Litre bottles of Cidre Breton are Kerisac’s best seller in the UK, outdoing their 750ml and 330ml bottle formats. Would Cidre Breton be as successful if it only came in a 750ml wine bottle? If it was dressed in the dark green of Champagne and adorned with a cork and cage? Would our translation of it be the same as it is in its litre vesture? If it hadn’t been championed by such an admired institution as The French House and become so synonymous with the iconically stripped back simplicity of dining at St. John?
Of course not. Be it a dining hall in London or the countryside of Guenrouët, location quickly becomes aspiration. The rustic, rural nature of Cidre Breton’s style, the farmyard imagery and the simplistic label design that speaks to a small scale cider operation that no longer exists, the uncomplicated bottle shape that signals to milk and soft drinks as opposed to high end fine wine all work to put a consumer at ease.
There is no trace of poshness or pretentiousness here, all are welcome. Cidre Breton is a cider from the people for the people, that extra 250ml a gesture of diplomatic goodwill.
To Britain, Cidre Breton becomes an emblem of an accessible France, something attainable to most, regardless of finances and status. A franco-take on a British heritage—orchards and cider are intrinsic to rural, working class stereotypes of Britain after all—allowing us, litre by litre, to drink exactly as the French do.
Anaïs
〰️
Anaïs 〰️
Up until recently, British drinkers have been drinking a different version of Kerisac to the French. For whilst Britain have been receiving a full juice product, France has been consuming a markedly diluted version.
“We’ve only ever exported full juice cider, our cuvée spéciale intended for gourmet restaurants and bottle shops,” Kerisac international manager, Bruno Comard, says. “Now the French range is also full juice.”
Kerisac reworked most of their recipes in 2020 to make them full juice—ironically one of the exceptions to this is the French version of the litre bottle. “In the 1950s, people were drinking ten times more cider than today, which is why we started using concentrated apple juice, to meet the demand,” Laurent says. “Now it doesn’t make sense to keep doing that.”
This need to go premium hasn’t come from nowhere. While Kerisac sales are growing in the U.K., they’re dropping in France, like most brands sold in the mass distribution market. In 2024, cider sales in French supermarkets fell by 2,5%. On the other hand, the cider category in the U.K. has made a 5% growth in value over the last two years, according to the 2025 Heineken Cider Report.
Cidre Breton is the perfect example of how our perception of a product can be entirely different depending on where we live, the products we usually have access to and the ones we don’t. Being an imported good played a large role in making Kerisac a small and confidential French cider for London's best tables and trendiest wine bars.
“We may be considered big in France, but we’re the small one in the British market,” Bruno Comard says. “We benefit from the good image associated with the French savoir-faire, which is why we’re seen as a high-end Breton cider abroad.”
That ecru minimalistic label giving small traditional farmy vibes was created for the British market, where the brand started exporting in the 1990s, and has never changed since. Now, Kerisac exports 5% of its production there, as well as Québec—where it’s the only French cider sold by the SAQ—Finland, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan, Poland and the United States.
I can see the appeal and I can see why Trevor calls Cidre Breton true cider when the UK’s best-selling cider, Strongbow (owned by Heineken), is made of water, fermented apple juice with sucrose, syrup, carbon dioxide, malic acid, natural apple flavouring, caramel and potassium metabisulfite.
Any French full juice cider, like Cidre Breton, can be called true cider next to that.
