A Brief History of Cider in America

At one time in America's history, cider was a staple of most any household. It was easily made, inexpensive, easy to store and was safe to drink. The earliest settlers, embarking from the heart of England's cider country brought with them rootstocks to establish apple orchards for cider. In short time, new cultivars of apples were created unique to America. Safer to drink than water, cider was served with every meal. When it turned sour, the vinegar was used for cooking, preserving and indeed for drinking in refreshing draughts of haymaker's switchel and vinegar shrub.

Cider was a favorite beverage of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who relied on a morning tankard of the stuff to "put (his) stomach at ease." When incumbent president Martin van Buren accused his challenger, William Henry Harrison of being a cider-swilling layabout, Harrison adopted the cider barrel as a symbol of his campaign. By exploiting the perception of cider as an American institution, Harrison demonstrated that he possessed the "common touch" and defeated van Buren to become the ninth president of the United States.

Though it helped to make the (brief!) presidency of Harrison, cider had become too common. It was not valued for its particular rarity or the skill by which it was crafted, it was simply a drink that tasted good and was safer than the water sources on many farms. It came to be taken for granted that cider was an inexorable part of life in America.


The Industrial Revolution brought with it a precipitous decline in cider production. Orchards established in small farmyards were swallowed as cities expanded. An influx of immigrants from Western and Central Europe, notably Germans brought with them their own industry in brewing. Beer gained favor for many of the reasons cider did but with one significant difference; the malt used to make beer was easily stored and transported while cider apples were not. Generally speaking, cider mills were located on or near orchards as apples were heavy and easily damaged in transport. The malt used in brewing could be grown hundreds of miles away and be easily stored and shipped to breweries for production. Where cider was the product of farms, beer was the product of cities.

The final blow for cider came with Prohibition. To the extent that it remained at all in the farms and fields of New England and elsewhere, cider was driven out. Some farmers were able to maintain their mills and orchards by helping Americans realize a taste for sweet cider (a drink embraced by the temperance movement and found almost nowhere else) but for a time at least, the craft was done for.


While cider may not have ever disappeared entirely from view, the tradition of local cidermaking in America went fuctionally extinct.

A limited number of "traditional" producers of cider still remain but I would argue that much of the craft and art of producing good cider has disappeared. Of late, a handful of regional producers have been working to revive this process with some success but largely, our hard cider options in this country are limited to the artificially sweetened pub variety (think Magner's, Original Sin, Woodchuck) and the overly dry apple wines of well-meaning but poorly enabled small-scale producers. It is my hope that moving forward, we begin seeing the sort of dedication and enterprise in the world of cider production that we have seen in the last twenty years of American Brewing.

A word on style (with a BS opener)

To speak of "style" when referencing anything as fluid as a food product such as cider or, for that matter, any other creative human endeavor such as dance, music, art, etc. is to realize that those who might have been the progenitors of the style cannot be relied upon to continue observing it. It is the outsider who categorizes that which is new to them as it is only through the prism of having experienced something ostensibly unique that one can hold in contrast that which they presume to know.

Excuse the fluffery.

I suppose that is a longhand for saying that it is the audience who determines the category, not the creator. This becomes a problem when we hew too closely to stylistic lines. In the case of cider, American brewing organizations (BJCP) classify nine different styles of cider and perry (a close cousin made from pears). If we used this as our only characterization, limitations would soon present themselves. To chose two; English ciders is a single category with no room for regional styles and no category exists for Spanish ciders (a vast and vibrant family).

The challenge then is in trying to marry the product with the audience who has been primed to think of ciders within a narrow range of strengths, flavors and even colors. If we hew too tightly to the idea that Cider Style "A" tastes like THIS and Cider Style "B" tastes like THAT, we shoot ourselves in our collectively creative feet. However, without some semblance of categorization, no expectation can be made by the consumer. When discussing cider styles in the following posts, I will work to avoid too many presumptions about style. Where similarities are found to exist or generalizations to be made, I will make them but with an eye for the exception.

To get back to the original point of categorizing creativity, we can always look backwards to try to draw connections between like things but we must not use those borders to hem us in to a predetermined outcome.

What's In a Name?

Off to a trite start...

The purpose of what I aim to be at least a few informative posts is to help catalog and promote information related to (hard) cider in terms of its production, history, future and enjoyment.

A bit about the name; the spelling of cider as "cyder" is a nod to our forefathers. Our conception of cider as Americans (such as it exists) is rooted in the traditions of the UK. Dorset, Cornwall and other counties in the Southwest of England were the jumping off points for many of the early colonists and remain the heart of traditional cider production today. In that and other corners of the UK, certain producers still opt to spell the beverage "cyder" in order to distinguish their products from the apple-flavored alco-pop sold in bars, bottles and cans.

I hope that you as a reader find the following posts informative and inspiring enough to start searching out better bottles. Get to know your local wine dealer or restauranteur and press them to carry the good stuff; chances are they are every bit as eager as you for new products. By bringing makers of quality product to the fore, you will help to ensure their survival in the years to come.

Best,

R