In India, we might still be warming up to the concept of apple cider, but Thirsty Fox, a homegrown craft cider brand that launched in November 2019, is already going places. The brand won the India Cider of the year award at New York International Cider Competition 2021, and their latest creation Kipp—India’s first hopped cider—was awarded a silver medal at the event. The juicy, unfiltered beverage with a bitter-sweet complexity is made using hand-picked apples that are fermented with a proprietary blend of hops and blended with cold-pressed apple juice. The result is a cloudy, fruit-forward cider with heady tropical aroma and a lingering finish. Kipp has an alcohol content of 5.5 per cent ABV and is gluten-free and vegan. Given that it’s a relatively new category of alcoholic beverage outside the routine beer and wine, we reached out to Thirsty Fox founder Siddharth Sheth and in-house pommelier Shibani Surkund to know more. 

Siddharth Sheth