Cider

From Frikipedia

General term for any drink made by fermenting apples. Popular brands of cider include Blackthorn and Strongbow, which have gained a large market share due to their excellent flavour. Cider is also the drink of choice for the discerning tramp, although he prefers the slightly stronger Diamond White or White Lightning.

Proper Cider

Out in the west they brew luminous liquids that are allegedly made from apples. Once you've got your head around drinking something bright orange your memory fades, and you wake up feeling slightly under the weather.

Trendy Ciders

Recently, a number of companies have started trying to make cider cool and popular, in a manner similar to American high school films where a spotty geek is miraculously turned into a foxy stunner in time for the ball, or the prom, or whatever it is they do over there. Thus, you can now choose from Magners (known in Ireland as Bulmers) or, confusingly, Bulmers (known in Ireland as "Hang on, that's our name!"), which come in glass bottles and are served in pint glasses over ice. This is an annoyance. Mainly because it completely ruins the uniqueness of the Withnail and I round ("Two large gins and two pints of cider....ice in the ciders").

It is also pointless. It still tastes like the slightly fizzy bottle of fermented apple juice that it is, and it is still a bloody awful drink. As a wise man once said, you can't polish a poo. Nor can you improve the flavour of a drink so fundamentally lacking in any reedeeming quality.

Nevertheless, it has somehow caught on. So summer beer gardens are now full of tables of men and women eagerly quaffing on their chemical-soaked sub-scrumpy pish. These people are no higher up the drinkers pecking order than the bunch of teenagers hanging around the park after hours, surreptitiously passing round a two litre plastic bottle of Strongbow, or the crusty tramp collapsed in a stupour outside Jacksons, angrily shouting meaningless adjectives at passers-by whilst greedily clutching his 59p bottle of super-strength cider like it was the child he never had.

Hopefully, cider will fall back into obscurity soon, or else other drinks will start trying to taste of fruit in order to appeal to the masses. (See: Fosters Twist).