The beauty of cider lies in its simplicity:

W H E R E F R E S H I D E A S G R O W

www.kivagroup.org

kiva fresh

You pick apples, you grind them up, you press them, then you ferment the juice; after the fermented juice rests for a while, you bottle it. So whether apples are harvested from an orchard or foraged from the wild, if you want to make cider, at some point, the fruit ends up in a press.

You don’t “brew” cider. Cider is essentially apple wine, made with fruit grown in an orchard in the same way wine comes from grapes grown in a vineyard. And like wine, cider can only be made once a year, after the fall harvest. Cider makers even use a version of the truism (or well-worn cliché) that winemakers always repeat: Cider making begins in the orchard.

Think about an apple. Try not to think about context and meaning. Don’t think about the Garden of Eden or a talking snake who coaxes Eve into eating an apple from the tree of life

and all that business about original sin and the so-called “fall of man.” (Never mind that the forbidden fruit was probably a fig or a pomegranate anyway.) Forget the golden apples of immortality kept by the Norse goddess Idunn, or the apple that fell on Sir Isaac Newton’s head, or the poisoned apple given to Snow White. Forget about an apple a day keeping the doctor away.

Just picture an apple in your mind. If you’re like most people, it’s a simple thing to conjure, something you’ve done since childhood—A, after all, is for Apple. What you’re likely imagining is red and shiny and perfectly round. It’s the kind of apple you’d find in the grocery store. If we were to put a name to this apple, it might be Red Delicious or McIntosh or Gala or Fuji or Cortland or Jonagold or everyone’s new favorite, Honeycrisp. Or perhaps Granny Smith or Golden Delicious if

IN-CIDERInformation

you think in green or yellow rather than red. In any case, you’re likely thinking of an apple you can hold in your hand and bite into. These are called dessert apples or culinary apples. They’re the sort of familiar fruit that much of the cider in the United States is made from.

Cider from dessert apples veers toward sweet and low in alcohol, with straightforward appley aromas, not too much acidity, and almost no tannins or structure. Ciders like this can be refreshing and quaffable, if they aren’t too cloying, which unfortunately many of them are. But they don’t offer much in the way of complexity. A cider made from dessert apples is what cider people call modern. Modern, in fact, is the official term used by the United States Association of Cider Makers (USACM), a trade group of more than a thousand members, which invested a lot of time and effort in 2017 to create a Style Guide that delineates various categories.

The opposite of modern cider is the other major category—cider made from cider apples. Cider apples are far from the idealized shiny red orbs of childhood. They’re often gnarled, rough, russeted, pocked with brown and black spots, oddly shaped, and sometimes the size of little deformed golf balls. These apples might be classified as bittersweets, bittersharps, heirlooms, crab apples, or even wild apples. According to the USACM’s Cider Style Guide, ciders made with cider

apples are now officially called heritage, to differentiate them from modern cider. Heritage cider, the USACM states in its definition, has “increased complexity” and “complex aromatics.” The complexity of heritage cider is created in the orchard.

Bittersweet apples like Yarlington Mill, Chisel Jersey, or Dabinett are high in sugar, yet have serious tannins—that drying, black-tea-meets-fuzzy-stone texture that red wine drinkers know well. Meanwhile, bittersharps, such as Kingston Black, Porter’s Perfection, and Foxwhelp, pair enamel-peeling acidity with big tannins. Cider apples might have ten times the tannins of dessert apples. Once upon a time, when bittersharps and bittersweets were more common, they were known as “spitters.”

Many of the bittersweets and bittersharps that now grow in North

America were first cultivated in England or France. American

heirloom apples are also sought after for heritage

cider, bringing complex aromas, minerality, and acidity. Many heirlooms were prized for both drinking and eating in centuries past, but at some point they fell out of favor and

popular taste.In the early 20th

century came the temperance movement and Prohibition, and people started growing apples for eating rather than cider making. This is when the slogan “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” came into being. By the mid-20th century, the nationwide standardization of fruit for the growing supermarket industry meant relying less on idiosyncratic, local varieties.

Heirloom apples are now kept alive most often in small orchards, coveted by cider makers who blend them with tart crab apples and foraged wild fruit. Likewise, heritage cider is made mostly by small local producers, people who live in close connection to their apples.

H A R D C I D E R

IN BRITAIN, THE FIRST REFERENCES TO CIDER DATE

BACK TO 55 BCE, WHEN THE INVADING ROMANS OBSERVED THE CELTS FERMENTING A DRINK FROM LOCAL APPLES.

IN NORMANDY, BY THE 16TH CENTURY, THERE WERE MORE

THAN 60 NAMED APPLES OFFICIALLY PERMITTED FOR CIDER MAKING. EARLY SETTLERS BROUGHT APPLES TO AMERICA, AND WITHIN A FEW YEARS AFTER THE MAYFLOWER LANDED IN 1620, THE FIRST APPLE TREES WERE PLANTED IN MASSACHUSETTS.

BY THE 1670S, SOME NEW ENGLAND VILLAGES WERE

PRODUCING MORE THAN 500 HOGSHEADS (OR 32,000 GALLONS) PER YEAR.

A CIDER MADE FROM DESSERT APPLES IS WHAT CIDER PEOPLE CALL modern

HARD CIDER HISTORY

HARRISONThis New Jersey apple first appeared in early 19th-century. The noted pomologist William Coxe wrote, in 1817, of Harrison’s “high coloured, rich, and sweet cider of great strength, commanding a high price in New York when fined for bottling.” But by the mid-20th century, Harrison had disappeared, thought to be extinct. Then, in 1976, an orchardist named Paul Gidez used Coxe’s 19th-century description to track down a single Harrison tree at an old cider mill in Livingston, New Jersey. Burford, the author and fruit historian, helped verify its identity. In a 2010 interview with Edible Jersey magazine, Burford called Harrison “the most enigmatic apple I’ve ever dealt with. When I first tasted it I had to sit down. I was so unsettled. How could it have happened that this great cider apple got pushed out of production?” Harrison is now grown mostly in Virginia.

ROXBURY RUSSETEarly settlers began making selections of apple trees to graft and cultivate, to cut down on the uncertainty of growing apples from wild seedlings. It’s believed that the Roxbury Russet was the first selected apple, first grown in the 1630s by settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the town of Roxbury. “Russet” refers to the rough yellowish-brown patches on the apple skin. The Roxbury Russet was known to be good for keeping through the winter.

RHODE ISLAND GREENINGIn 1650, this green apple was discovered in the Rhode Island village of Green’s End (near modern day Newport) from a tree found behind the inn of a tavern keeper named Green. It quickly became one of the most popular apples in early America. People eventually took so many twigs off the original tree that they killed it. But the apple lived on in scores of other orchards and it’s is still found today in many cider orchards.

BALDWINThis apple was discovered in Massachusetts, along the proposed route for the Middlesex Canal in the 1740s. Though the Baldwin didn’t get its official name until 1795. “Up until then, they were calling it a Pecker, short for ‘woodpecker,’ because the tree was liked by woodpeckers,” says apple historian John Bunker. With the advent of commercial orchards, the Baldwin became one of the most important apples in America up until the Civil War. The original tree died in 1815, knocked over by a gale; a monument now stands at the site in present-day Wilmington, Massachusetts.

H A R D C I D E R

All American ApplesSOME AMERICAN APPLE VARIETIES HAVE WITHSTOOD THE TESTS OF TIME. HERE ARE FOUR HISTORIC AMERICAN VARIETIES THAT ARE STILL GROWN.

AT THE END OF THE 18TH CENTURY, THE AVERAGE

MASSACHUSETTS RESIDENT CONSUMED, ANNUALLY, ABOUT 35 GALLONS OF CIDER. THIS WAS THE ERA OF THE OFTEN-TOLD TALE OF JOHN ADAMS’S PRODIGIOUS CIDER CONSUMPTION — IT’S SAID THAT ADAMS DRANK A TANKARD EVERY DAY AT BREAKFAST.

CIDER BEGAN TO LOSE GROUND TO BEER IN THE MID-19TH

CENTURY, BROUGHT BY THE INFLUX OF GERMAN IMMIGRANTS DURING THAT CENTURY. SOON BEER BECAME THE POPULAR DRINK OF CHOICE.

H A R D C I D E R " B E E R " B R E A D W I T H M A P L E B U T T E R

F O R T H E B R E A D

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

3 tablespoons pure maple syrup

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, and divided

12 ounce bottle hard apple cider

F O R T H E B U T T E R

8 tablespoons butter (1 stick), softened

3 tablespoons pure maple syrup

pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and grease a loaf pan with cooking spray. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the maple syrup, 3 tablespoons of the melted butter, the hard apple cider, and stir just until combined. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and spread evenly. Drizzle the remaining tablespoon of melted butter over the top, and bake on the middle rack of the oven for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and cool completely.

M A P L E B U T T E R :Beat the 8 tablespoons softened butter with the maple syrup and pinch of salt until combined and place in a bowl. Allow to solidify at room temperature. Serve softened with the beer bread.

SOURCE: FLAVORTHEMOMENTS.COM

C H I C K E N B R A I S E D W I T H H A R D C I D E R , B A C O N & V E G G I E S4 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts (about 3 pounds total)

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 teaspoons olive oil

4 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into 1/2” wide strips

3 tablespoons minced shallot

2 1/2 cups hard cider

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary

1 pound carrots and parsnips, peeled, any woody core removed, and cut into sticks 3” by 1/2”

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Rinse chicken breasts

under cool running water and dry them with paper towels. (Be sure to dry the chicken thoroughly, or it won’t brown properly) Season chicken all over with salt and pepper. Set aside.

In a large, deep lidded skillet, over medium heat, combine oil and bacon pieces. Stir a few times, until the bacon renders most of its fat and is just crisp, about 6 minutes. Transfer bacon to a paper towel-lined plate to drain.

Pour off and discard all but 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and rendered bacon fat from the pan. Return braiser to the same burner, and heat the remaining fat over medium-high heat. Place prepared chicken breasts skin side down in the pan and brown, without disturbing, for about five minutes. Once the skin is nicely browned turn

and brown the other side. Transfer chicken to a large plate to catch the juices, and set aside.

Return braiser to same burner, still over medium-high heat and add the shallots. Let it sizzle, stirring, for a minute. Quickly pour in two cups of the hard cider to deglaze, and scrape the bottom of the pan to dislodge and dissolve the browned bits that will flavor the sauce. Let the cider boil to reduce down to about 1/2 cup, about 15 minutes or so. Add the

rosemary and the remaining 1/2 cup cider and boil down again until there’s about 3/4 cup total, another six to

eight minutes.

Add the parsnips and carrots and season with pepper and a pinch of salt. Sprinkle the bacon over the parsnips, and arrange the chicken pieces on top, skin side down. Cover with parchment paper, pressing down so that the paper nearly rests on

the chicken pieces and hangs over the sides of the pan by about an inch, and set the lid in place. Slide the pan onto a rack in the lower third of the oven to

braise at a gentle simmer. After 25 minutes, turn the chicken pieces. Continue braising until the meat at the thickest part of the breast is cooked through when you make a small incision with a knife, another 20 to 25 minutes.SOURCE: AFARMGIRLSDABBLES.COM

856.384.7773kivagroup.org

This newsletter was written, designed and printed by the Kiva Group as an example of our work. What can we do for you? Design a new ad campaign? A new corporate identity? Books? Annual Reports? Clean up your old communications? Visit kivagroup.org for more information.

Cider is the quintessential American beverage. Drank by early settlers and founding fathers, it was ubiquitous and pervasive, but following Prohibition when orchards were destroyed and neglected, cider all but disappeared. In The Cider Revival, Jason Wilson chronicles what is happening now with a blend of history and travelogue, a toast to a complex drink.

H A R D C I D E R