New on the bar: 27 April 2026 · 5% ABV · Sparkling Medium Cider
There’s a particular kind of joy that arrives with the first proper sunshine of the year — and we’ve timed our latest draught addition perfectly. Meet Nirvana by Tricky Cider: a sparkling medium cider from the Somerset Levels that more than earns its name.
What Is Nirvana?
Nirvana is a 5% ABV sparkling medium cider made by Tricky Cider at Netherham Farm, Low Ham, near Langport in Somerset. It arrived on the bar here at Blackfriars on 24 April 2026 — and if you’ve been putting up with industrial keg cider, this is the wake-up call you didn’t know you needed.
Clean and crisp on the pour, it has that characteristic Somerset snap: a blend of bittersweet and bittersharp apples giving it genuine tannin structure and balanced acidity. Medium-sweet without ever becoming cloying. Full-flavoured, with a crisp, refreshing finish. This is the glass of cider you actually want to sit in the sun with.
Real Cider. Properly Made.
This matters: Nirvana is the real thing.
It’s made entirely from 100% real apple juice — no concentrate, no shortcuts. The draught version is unfiltered and unfined, meaning it carries all the raw character of the farm directly into your glass. Fermentation happens naturally, using airborne wild yeasts — the kind that drift across the orchards of the Somerset Levels and settle where they please. Sweetness is balanced with cane sugar only; not a single artificial sweetener in sight.
The result is a cider with genuine structure: proper tannins from proper bittersweet apples, real acidity from bittersharp varieties, and the kind of depth that comes from twenty years of doing it right.
This isn’t a fruit drink dressed up in a cider glass. It’s the real thing.
The Story Behind the Glass
Tricky Cider has been making real Somerset cider since 2004, when it was founded by Steve Watkins and Alistair Brice — the name itself a nod to the historic ‘Trickey Warren’ on the Somerset Levels. Today the business is in the sole hands of Matt Gillett, who took ownership in 2019 and moved production to Netherham Farm in 2023, establishing proper on-site pressing for the first time.
What makes Matt’s story worth telling — and what makes Tricky Cider worth seeking out — is this: he doesn’t just press cider from the orchards. He maintains them. Every year, Matt personally prunes and cares for the heritage apple trees on the Somerset Levels. That’s not a marketing line. That’s conservation work that most people never see and few cider drinkers ever think about.
Without people like Matt tending traditional orchards, the biodiversity disappears. The apple varieties disappear. And the flavour that makes real Somerset cider what it is — that deep, tannic, complex character you can’t fake with concentrate — disappears with them.
Tricky Cider also holds a connection to the legendary Hecks Cider of Street, Somerset, where the apples were previously pressed before establishing independent production. It’s a heritage lineage worth respecting.
Why Now?
Because the beer garden is calling.
Because the sun is — finally — out.
Because you deserve something better than the fizzy beige stuff from a multinational tap.
Nirvana is the ideal sunshine pour: refreshing enough for your first pint on a warm afternoon, complex enough to reward proper attention. It’s a genuine alternative to industrial cider, and it’s here on draught, cold and ready.
The name says it all. Bliss in a glass. The summer feeling.
Come and Find Yours
Nirvana by Tricky Cider is on draught at The Blackfriars Tavern now.
Ask at the bar. Sit outside. Find yours.
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