page_title: Cider in the United States
section_title: Hard cider
hierarchical_section_title: Cider in the United States / Hard cider
caption_attribution_description: Repository: California Historical Society Collection: California wine label and ephemera collection Date: undated General Note: Winery established in 1893 Call Number: Kemble Spec Col 07 Digital Object ID: Kemble Spec Col 07_005.jpg Preferred Citation: Wine label, Eagle Vineyard Products Co., Baronet Apple Wine, California wine label and ephemera collection, Kemble Spec Col 07, courtesy, California Historical Society, Kemble Spec Col 07_005.jpg.
context_page_description: In the United States, the definition of cider is usually more broad than in Europe. There are two types: one being the traditional fermented product, called hard cider, and the second sweet or soft cider. However, in some regions, cider is the alcoholic version, whether made from apples or pears, and apple cider is the non-alcoholic version.
context_section_description: The history of cider in the United States is very closely tied to the history of apple growing in the country. Most of the 17th- and 18th-century emigrants to America from the British Isles drank hard cider and its variants. Apples were one of the earliest known crops in the English-speaking New World; ships' manifests show young saplings being carefully planted in barrels and many hopeful farmers bringing bags of seed with them, with the first settlers headed to what is now the Southeast. Within thirty-five years of the settlement of Jamestown in 1607, the land was put to the plow to grow tobacco which provided a source of revenue for the colonists and made British settlement a success in the New World after several failed attempts. However, other edible cash crops were planted, like rice, maize, and apples, since such would have had value in the markets of growing cities like London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Cardiff.
  The earliest known provision for cider making is believed to have been carried on the Mayflower itself in 1620. Halfway through the journey, the ship was caught in a storm and one of its beams cracked badly enough to warrant the consideration of turning back to England. "The great iron screw", taken from a cider press, helped brace the beam to keep the ship from breaking up and did it long enough to make it to the New World. Nine days after the Puritans landed (and perhaps in great thanks for having survived the journey at all) a man by the name of William Blackstone planted the first apple trees in the New England colonies. The first recorded shipment of honeybees to America, important for the pollination of apples, is recorded in 1622 in Virginia. In New England, John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1632, recorded his tenants paying their rent on Governor's Island in two bushels of apples a year. In 1634 Lord Baltimore instructed settlers of the new colony of Maryland to carry across the sea "kernalls of peares and apples, especially of Pipins, Pearemains,  and Deesons for maykinge thereafter of Cider and Perry."
  There are records of at least one English apple cultivar used for cider and cooking, Catshead, being grown on Berkeley Hundred Plantation in Virginia around this time; later introductions from the UK would have included Foxwhelp, Redstreak, and the extinct Costard. Other records from the Tidewater South show wealthier farmers and plantation owners arranging for the import of French apple varieties, such as Calville Blanc, Pomme d'Api, and Court Pendu Plat, likely in part due to qualities they wanted to improve in the stock available and the difficulty there was in keeping early breed-stock alive. Unbeknownst to the colonists leaving for the New World, they faced an uphill battle  in planting some of their favorite foods, including apples. None of the colonists knew that the honeybee is not a native insect to America and knew absolutely nothing about the husbandry of orchard mason bees, something nobody would put to use until three centuries later. In Europe, honeybees were and still are the main means of pollination for apples, cherries, and pears, and thus some of the earliest pleas for new supplies sent home to Britain by Jamestown colonists were for beehives. Only about 20% of apple trees produced from apple seeds shall grow a fruit comparable to the parent plant, while about 60% will be passable for consumption and the remaining 20% will be "crab apples" unfit for most human tastes. and the records of all the thirteen colonies indicate that the favored method of propagation from 1607-1737 was not grafting since this method was expensive and the reserve of the wealthy using crabapple rootstock.
  Additionally, the businesses of diseases, pests, and temperature all presented challenges to growing in Eastern America. Normally tent caterpillars are parasites to Southern crab apple trees, black cherry trees, chokecherries, beach plums,  and the sweet crabapple, members of the family Rosaceae native to the Eastern United States. They made no distinction between these and the European
caption: Eagle Vineyard, Baronet Apple Wine. Label from California Historical Society.
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