Naughton Cider Company
Naughton Cider Company is the most ambitious producer in Scottish cider — a family-run operation on the Naughton estate in north-east Fife, near Balmerino, founded by Peter Crawford, who spent over twenty years as a champagne specialist and importer before turning to cider. From 2018 he revived the estate's dormant orchards — including a walled orchard dating back centuries — and planted around 1,500 trees of classic cider varieties such as Dabinett, Kingston Black and Yarlington Mill. The cider is made with full champagne technique: fermentation in French oak casks that previously held champagne, secondary fermentation in the bottle, hand riddling, disgorgement, and long ageing on the lees.
If you think of cider as a cheap pub drink, Naughton is the producer that will change your mind — this is cider made, priced, and presented like fine wine. The Traditional Method Brut is the flagship experience; the Lanthorn range is the affordable introduction. It's a completely different proposition from Thistly Cross: less a session drink, more a champagne alternative with Scottish fruit.
The Naughton Cider Company range
Traditional Method Brut Vintage
The headline product — cider made the way champagne is made, with a secondary fermentation in the bottle followed by extended ageing on the lees, then riddling and disgorgement. Cider Review reported that the 2020 release spent more than four years on its lees before disgorgement. Sold direct at around £26 a bottle as of mid-2026.
Available in: 75cl bottles
Homage to Hogg
A still, dry expression released in limited vintages. Wine writer Rose Murray Brown described the 2020 vintage as showing 'toffee, leathery, orange marmalade notes' with light tannins and a distinctly vinous character. Availability varies — it sells out between releases.
Available in: 75cl bottles
Lanthorn
The approachable end of the Naughton line-up — three variants (Cider Apples, Culinary Apples, and Bittersharp) that showcase different apple categories separately. Priced around £4.50–£5.50 a bottle direct as of mid-2026, making them the affordable way into the producer's style.
Le Clos
The top cuvée, made from the estate's historic walled-orchard fruit with roughly three years planned on the lees according to Cider Review. Released in small quantities at around £45 and sold out at the time of writing (mid-2026).
Available in: 75cl bottles
Where to buy
Direct from naughtoncider.com, plus around ten specialist wine and cider merchants across Scotland, England and Wales — including St Andrews Wine Company, The Fine Cider Company, and The Beerhive in Edinburgh. Not stocked in supermarkets.
Food pairings
- Oysters and shellfish (the Brut, served as you would champagne)
- Roast pork or roast chicken
- Aged hard cheeses
- Aperitifs and celebration toasts
The obvious question is whether any cider is worth £26–45 a bottle. Naughton's answer is that this isn't competing with cider — it's competing with champagne and English sparkling wine, using the same techniques and timescales. Whether that argument works for you depends on your wallet, but nobody else in Scotland is attempting anything like it, and the specialist cider press has taken it very seriously. Start with a Lanthorn bottle at around a fiver before committing to the vintage Brut.
Frequently asked questions
+What is traditional method cider?
It's cider made using the technique behind champagne: a still base cider undergoes a second fermentation inside the bottle, creating natural carbonation, and then ages on its spent yeast (the lees) for added depth before the sediment is removed by riddling and disgorgement. Naughton is Scotland's leading exponent — its 2020 Traditional Method release spent over four years on the lees.
+Who founded Naughton Cider?
Peter Crawford, who worked for over twenty years as a champagne specialist and importer before returning to his family's Naughton estate in north-east Fife. From 2018 he revived the estate's dormant orchards — including a historic walled orchard — and began applying champagne techniques to Scottish cider.
+Where can I buy Naughton cider?
Direct from naughtoncider.com, or from specialist merchants including St Andrews Wine Company, The Fine Cider Company, and The Beerhive in Edinburgh. As of mid-2026, the Lanthorn range starts around £4.50–£5.50 a bottle, the Traditional Method Brut Vintage is around £26, and the limited Le Clos around £45. It is not sold in supermarkets.
+Why is Naughton cider so expensive?
Because it's made like champagne, not like commercial cider: oak fermentation in ex-champagne casks, a second fermentation in the bottle, hand riddling and disgorgement, and years of ageing on the lees before release. Those timescales and techniques carry champagne-level costs. The Lanthorn range, at around £4.50–£5.50, is the affordable entry point.
Other Scottish cider producers
Seidear (The Wee Scottish Cider Company)
Seidear — made by The Wee Scottish Cider Company at Kingcausie on Deeside, just south of Aberdeen — is billed as the first Scottish cider made by keeving and the champagne method. Founder Christian Stolte, German-born and originally in Aberdeen for the oil industry, began making cider from his own garden apples before turning the hobby into a cidery, producing around 3,500 bottles a year. The apples are old varieties gathered from historic walled gardens across the north-east — Haddo, Cluny, Craigievar, Falkland and private orchards — and the process takes at least a year from harvest to bottle: keeving, wild fermentation, secondary fermentation in champagne bottles, daily hand riddling, and disgorgement.
Thistly Cross Cider
Scotland's leading cidery, based at Wester Pencaitland in East Lothian. Founded in 2009 by Peter Stuart, Thistly Cross has grown to become one of the most-distributed Scottish craft cider brands — stocked across major UK supermarkets, with a substantial export presence. The Whisky Cask cider is particularly distinctive: aged in ex-Scotch barrels, it's an unusual hybrid that no other major UK producer makes at scale.
Steilhead Cider
Steilhead Cider is the south-west's answer to proper farmhouse cider — Max and Penny Nowell have been making cider at Steilhead Cottage in Auldgirth, Nithsdale, about ten miles north of Dumfries, since 2013. The method is defiantly traditional: whole apples pressed for 100% fresh juice, fermented with nothing but the wild yeasts on the fruit (a process that can take up to a year), with no flavourings, sweeteners or sulphites added, and most bottles aged for up to two years before release. The fruit comes from their own orchard of around 60 trees and local growers, supplemented with Herefordshire cider apples while their own trees mature. Every cider in the range is named after a bird — Goldfinch, Siskin, Nuthatch, Bullfinch, Capercaillie, Swift & Swallow.
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