Nothing useful to add, just that I completely agree with you (about wanting sweet cider / perry and it always being the first thing that runs out).

One explanation might be that people who run beer festivals like beer, and so don't have pallets that like sweet alcohol, and so think no-one else can really like it in a short sighted kind of a way.

(Fromes Apple Sweet cider, which comes in bottles from Tescos, is rather good, I find. No idea if it's gluten free or not, though)

According to the guidelines given to coeliacs, all alcohol is gluten-free except beer. (Even spirits made from grain, because the distillation process gets rid of the gluten.) I might still be cautious of types of alcohol obscure enough that I thought the authors of those guidelines might plausibly not have considered them – I wouldn't drink anything labelled "barley wine", for instance – but cider is no problem at all. Thanks for the recommendation :-)

(While I'm here, did you ever reply to the email I sent you on the 16th? I had an embarrassing mail deletion incident just now, so I'm suddenly more paranoid that people might have tried to send me email and I lost it.)

(No, I'm just being useless. I'd love to see you, life, while calming down is still a bit crazy. I know that this week I'm not 'visiting' because it's only a three day week, I think that next week I have vague plans already. The week after that feels like a very long way away, but is distinctly possible. What days would suit you?)

Ooh, cool! :-) I'm generally free on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

<mild poke>? *hugs*

<f/x: returns to weeks-old entry>

Hmm. I looked in Tesco and also Sainsburys, and both of them had Fromes Dry, but I wasn't able to find any Fromes Sweet. Is this some obvious misunderstanding, like it being labelled dry but actually being sweeter than the average dry cider, or is your Tesco selling something that mine isn't?

No, there is Fromes dry and Fromes sweet. Fromes dry is nice too though, but, err, dryer than Fromes sweet. We have a quite scary Tescos that could cover small villages so I wouldn't be surprised if it has a slightly wider product range.

Aha. Perhaps I'll have a look the next time I'm in the utterly enormous Bar Hill Tesco. Then again, I'm only there about once every few months so in fact I'll probably forget...

Two months later, I did in fact manage to grab some Fromes sweet from the insanely enormous Tesco in Bar Hill, and it is indeed nice. I'll probably try to remember to get another few bottles every time I happen to be passing through that Tesco. Thank you :-)