Cider Wine

I subscribe to "Early American Life" magazine and "Organic Gardening" magazine. EAL is all about 18th and early 19th century antiques, houses, and well, articles about early American life. This month's issues of both magazine have articles about cider - not sweet cider like you get at your good apple orchard farm, but what we in this country call hard cider or cider that has an alcohol content. Since these are two widely diverse magazines in general content I found it very interesting that both had articles on this relatively unknown product in the United States.  Am I sensing a trend?

The EAL article talked a lot about the history of cider as a drink in this country. It was fairly common in the "old days" as it was a safe liquid for all members of the family to consume - especially when water supplies were easily contaminated and apples were easy to grow. Thomas Jefferson grew specific apples for cider, one of which was a large fruit crab apple called Hewes Crab.  This sounds like a great apple to add to the my orchard so I'll be on the hunt for it this fall.

You could press your own cider or you could take it to a cider mill, store it in wooden barrels and let the natural wild yeasts turn your cider into what is, based on the alcohol content of about 7%, cider wine.

Our family has a home cider press and we regularly press a few gallons each fall. We drink it sweet and quickly freeze what we can't drink because we don't want it to "turn".  Now in my experience, if I forget a jug of cider in the back of the frig it tends to go to vinegar, not cider wine. I keep thinking its "turning" to vinegar, but maybe it's really making alcohol. I think I need to experiment a little.

I'll keep you posted.