Cider: The First National Beverage

Apple cider has a strong case for being the original “American” beverage. It was the most popular drink in the New England colonies and drank daily into the early 19th century. Cider was considered a safer and more healthy alternative to the wells of Boston, regardless of the actual water quality.

The term “hard cider” is a modern convention since originally all cider was fermented. The strongest cider would be reserved for adult men and a weaker variant was consumed by women. Young children and the sick would drink a much weaker, diluted cider called ciderkin. The fresh cider available at apple orchards today was not considered cider at all, same as in Europe.

English colonists brought their love of cider to Massachusetts Bay by introducing domesticated apple trees, which are not native to North America. Early settlers brought seeds, along with grafts of apple trees. They jumpstarted their orchards by grafting onto wild, native crabapple trees.. Many of these early orchards were dedicated to cider apples, but sweet apples were also grown.

William Blackstone (Blaxton) the first European settler of Boston, is credited with the first American apple cultivar, sometime in the late 1620s. It was a versatile “sweet” apple called the yellow sweeting, that was good for home use and cider. It has since gone extinct but the Roxbury russet, is a surviving heirloom variety that dates to about the same time.

The growth of rum distilleries thanks to the Triangle Trade, began to cut into cider’s market share. However it was the arrival of German immigrants in the 1840s that truly started cider’s decline with the rise of beer. Prohibition in the 1920s saw the end of many cider orchards as they transitioned to sweet apples and unfermented cider. Although hard cider has reemerged as a niche in craft brewing, it has never regained its near-universal popularity.