And now for something completely different.
It may boggle the mind, but there are apparently people out there who prefer to drink alcoholic beverages that aren’t beer. While those people are unequivocally wrong, it is worth pointing out that cider is also a lovely and enjoyable alcoholic refreshment, and that you can get hold of Colombia’s first ever cider right here in the capital.
In 2013, Aotearea New Zealander Dan Hill was looking for an excuse to stay in Colombia after his contract with the country’s Air Force was up. He’d been in Colombia for three years by then, and it occurred to him that one thing this country didn’t seem to have, just as its craft beer industry was about to take off, was a cidery. Cider was booming in the States and the UK at the time and he couldn’t understand for the life of him why no one had really given it a crack here. He was introduced by his rugby teammate to Jairo Andrés Venegas, a local cricket and rugby fanatic (first Colombian wicketkeeper to represent the national team), and by the end of the year, they were working on the beginnings of Golden Lion Cider. Eight years later, the pair now run one of Bogotá’s biggest craft booze success stories.
Hailing from the small town of Timaru, just south of Christchurch, Dan has a background in homebrewing and spent five years in England before arriving here in Bogotá. As the cidery’s slogan quite literally states, that’s where the inspiration originally came from.
Starting the country’s first ever cider business hasn’t been nearly as straightforward as one might have expected it to be. Invima (Colombia’s national medication, food and beverage regulator) threw up hurdle after hurdle (even at one stage claiming that the product needed to be made in a specific area of Europe in order to be called cider) at the trailblazers. At one stage they spent eight months just paying rent and awaiting certification before being able to sell their product. Dan and Andrés insisted on playing it by the book and in 2017, they finally managed to sell the country’s first ever nationally licensed bottle of cider.
There’s no argument that it was worth the wait though. Golden Lion currently has the capacity to pump out 10,000L of cider a month and their product can be found all over the city, including on the shelves of Carulla. Dan still hopes that he and Andrés can grow their influence over Colombian drinking preferences, and the former seems to welcome any future competition with open arms – ‘The difficult thing is getting people to try cider in the first place’, he says. ‘The more cider that’s here, the more likely people are to try it.’
The cider
Golden Lion Cider is made with apple juice imported from Chile and Argentina. They use a mix of juice from six different varieties of apples, in order to blend in varying degrees of acidity, sweetness and bitterness. The fermentation is slow and controlled over 4-5 weeks to maximise flavour and quality consistency.
The cider starts off sweet with a touch of bitterness to follow, before a tart, dry after-taste. It’s refreshing, as crisp as the apples it’s made from, and perfect for those glorious Bogotá days when the sun’s out.
How to get ‘em
Other than popping into your local Carulla, the easiest way to get hold of Golden Lion is to jump on their website. They sell by six-pack, 12 pack and cases of 24, which will set you back COP$30,000, $50,000 and $95,000 respectively. Delivery goes out within 48 hours (except for
weekends) and generally costs around $6,000, depending on where you are. Various pubs also have it on tap.
You can pay through the website or directly into the company’s Bancolombia account.
