Fair enough!
I still like Original Sin as my favourite American cider. Dry and very apple-y.
A few weeks back, I had a taste of some French cidre from a 750mL bottle and it was really good, but not like American or English ciders. I don't have the palate to say what was different, just that is was.
Original Sin isn't bad either.
Truth be told, here in the US, it's hard to find a good cider. We take for granted somewhat our own brews, and forget that beer DOMINATED the market for the longest time (that any of us still living can remember). It wasn't until about 5 or so years ago that you had the influx and proliferation of hard ciders.
I mean my intro to it was while visiting a female friend of mine that knew I had an absolute hatred of beer, and suggested I try the ONE random season cider was that they had on tap. I fell in love with it and it was that lack of options that got me into making cider. (I got sick and damned tired of going bar to bar with friends and on almost a weekly basis of trying new bars out, being met with the same response, "sorry. we don't have ciders here")...
It was hard to find many options in a liquor store even, and you were pretty much limited to woodchuck, woodpecker, or maybe a bottle of Samuel Smith's.
Angry Orchard is **** cider. It's a division of Sam Adams, A BEER company. They don't really understand cider, but they know it's the hip new thing that every's into. And they market the hell out of it. On the one hand you feel like, "For ****'s sake! Did you brew this or just open a jug and pour some alcohol in it!" but on the other hand, it's because of their marketing that interest has grown and there's some good ciders making way into the market more now.
I think though, that now cider's in this weird place. Wine and beer are now grown up drinks where you see people acting snooty as hell and talking about "terroir" and tasting the earth, or how the "minerals in the brewing water" enhance and change the flavors. They talk of pinot noir, pinot grigio, pinot blanc, and pinot meunier. They talk of lambics, ales, lagers, stouts, and porters.
Cider.... It's not like that. You look around this forum, and most people are just buying jugs of cheap apple juice, dumping yeast into it, and happy with the results. It doesn't have a complex process like beer does, nor can you do terribly much with varietals in your materials like wine (worse yet, a single variety of apple tends to make a rather terrible cider).
In fact, when talking "like a grown up" about the alcohol you brew, the newest upstart, mead, is much easier to discuss than cider. Between it's nuanced flavors of the honey sources itself, it's ease of lending itself to process differences (do you burn the honey first to make a bochet? do you add fruits along side it to make a melomel? when do you add those ingredients to get what flavors from your additions? do you add spices to create a metheglin?) as well as tastes originating from the source itself (what varietal of honey do you use? did the bees somehow pick up another flavor that enhances/detracts from this year's harvest? Does the age of the honey affect the flavor? does aging the mead itself affect the flavor?)
Cider is still kind of trying to find itself within that realm to stand by its brothers and sisters in the art of brewing, and unfortunately, I think part of its staying power will depend on how it "pretend" along side all these other alcoholic drinks. Unfortunately, I don't think cider's a drink that's like that. It's an "everyman's drink", (and that, is something in itself that should be celebrated).
I'm sorry if I kinda seem like I'm rambling here, but I guess what I'm getting at is that cider's still incredibly new, so there's going to be some time before people really learn what a cider should taste like, and it's not a beverage that lends itself to many areas where traditionally you can judge or describe it in terms with delineations like you can with other types of brew.
There's basically clarity (which seems fairly easy to nail down, though I don't mind cloudy styles), sweetness, (which is a matter of preference), how well the apple flavor comes through (and that's fairly forgiving. If it tastes like apples, you kinda win), and whether or not there's any off flavors (which is of course demerits).* Cider is simply mainly a thing of personal preference.
*
(ONCE IN A BLUE MOON, if there's anything that makes it "special" it's worth noting that. One cider I had a VERY distinct subtle bitterness to it. It wasn't the bitterness of hops though, but the floral-y essence of apple peel.)
