July 4th Reflections on 250 Years of US Cider Making

     We believe that appearance and industrial cold storage ability often is more important than flavor and complexity in most commercially grown apples that are found in US grocery stores and farmers' markets today.  Heirloom varieties and those varieties developed over millennia and centuries, as long ago as Celtic parts of pre-Roman Britain and islands north, France and other areas of Europe where apples were specifically bred for cider making, are legacies we gratefully inherit and hope to honor in our products.   Heirloom and designated cider varieties have better balances of acids (tartness), tannins, and sugars, and better flavors in fermentation than varieties that are more commonly known and found for public purchase.  But the general loss of so many specific ancient genetic lineages chases us all ferociously, even more for apples because most varieties need to be cloned, and what is cloned in large part in the US today are commercial apples. This is for many historical and corporate reasons:  from the demographic transition that began in the late 19^th century when most of the US population started to move from rural areas to industrial centers; through US Prohibition (1919/20-1932); into the present in which smaller farms, farmsteads and human-scaled agriculture continues to be lost to internationally controlled corporate farms and absentee land owners.

     Even the earliest Europeans who migrated to North America brought apple scion wood and (fermented) cider with them.  Maryland saw European immigrants as orchardists and cider makers as early as the early 1600s in Saint Mary’s City.  Not only early colonists but the Cherokee, before they were forced from their Appalachian homelands, were both avid cultivators of apples.  Even these events could not foretell, however, let alone document, the burgeoning hybridization and interbreeding that occurred among indigenous Appalachian and other American apples, European apples, and what seems to be at least one native crabapple, malus coronaria, from colonial times through around 1900, when more new varieties of apples arose in the territories of eastern and colonial America in what later became the US than any place else in the world. During that time, generations of agrarian cider makers were at work long before today’s fans could be found in urban cider bars.  Why would anyone, especially any American, want to lose such a unique treasure as a species’ self-emergent fertile crescent, centuries in the making?  We think it more than a shame that the apple has not been officially recognized as our national fruit.

     While longer-term effects remain to be seen, presently there is popular interest in finding, preserving and using heirloom apples and other heirloom foods and plants here, and in other countries.  If for no other reason, some realize the importance of preserving genetic diversity.  In the case of apples, it plummeted at least since the demographic transition when, some think, even millennial-long continuities and close daily interactions between early Europeans and apples, dropped precipitously. Most of the 20,000 or so apple varieties that had been known in the Eastern US up to 1900 or so have been lost.  Yet traces of ancient practices live on today.  For example, one apple variety known for centuries in England is thought to have been there at least since the Romans.  While renewed interest has fueled a cider revival in the US, it remains to be seen if it endures.  

     Having said that, the variety of styles and qualities of fermented ciders or apple wines range widely, again, for many reasons.  In Maryland, unlike other states with more cideries in them, the tax structure is disadvantageous to making apple wines as opposed to beer-like ciders.  We hope that will change for the sake of economic development if for no other reason.