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Cider Digest #1039
From: cider-request@talisman.com
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To: cider-list@talisman.com
Subject: Cider Digest #1039, 5 May 2003
Cider Digest #1039 5 May 2003
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Hagloe (Thomas Beckett)
Historical Question: Acadian/Cajun Cider making ("McGonegal, Charles")
Bulmer in the news again (Cider Digest)
English ciders available in U.S. (Jen)
Re: Some Thoughts on Defining Vintage and Traditional (Dick Dunn)
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Subject: Hagloe
From: Thomas Beckett <thomas@tbeckett.com>
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 07:33:47 -0400
cider-request@talisman.com wrote:
> Subject: Gloucestershire Orchard Group
> From: Andrew Lea <andrew_lea@compuserve.com>
> Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 21:24:11 +0100
> Does anyone know of Hagloe Crab being used anywhere on either side of
> the Atlantic? In the US, Coxe speaks of it in similar terms to the
> Harrison, the Winesap and the Hewes Crab. I wonder how widely it was
> actually grown?
Lee Calhoun lists the Hagloe among the extinct varieties in /Old
Southern Apples/. That's not the end of the story necessarily, as a
handful of such "extinct" varieties have turned up since 1995 when that
book was published. Here's his entry:
"SUMMER HAGLOE (Hagloe, Russian Hagloe): An old cooking apple of
unknown origin first described in 1817. Tree productive but a slow
grower with new shoots which are thick and blunt.
"Fruit large, roundish oblate; skin pale green or whitish yellow striped
with red, often with a thin bloom; stem short and thick in a broad open
cavity; calyx closed; basin small and round; flesh white, rather coarse,
tender, juicy, subacid. Ripe July-August. Catalog listings MD, VA, NC
((1869-1904)."
Thomas Beckett
Durham, North Carolina
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Subject: Historical Question: Acadian/Cajun Cider making
From: "McGonegal, Charles" <Charles.McGonegal@uop.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 13:26:23 -0500
French settlers to what is now Novia Scotia apparently brought apple growing
and cider making traditions along with them. Over 400 years later, the
Annapolis Valley (what was Acadia) is still an apple growing area.
Both those original settlers were forced south in the 18th century. I
suspect it's darned hard to grow good apples in a bayou, but here's my
question:
Does anyone know if any cider making tradition has been retained in the
Cajun culture? Either actively, or in culinary practices?
Charles McGonegal
AEppelTreow Winery
------------------------------
Subject: Bulmer in the news again
From: cider@talisman.com (Cider Digest)
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 16:18:16 -0600 (MDT)
The British cider-making giant H P Bulmer (53% of British cider sales, and
largest cider-maker in the world) is being bought out by the even-larger
British brewer Scottish & Newcastle. Bulmer has fallen on hard times, due
to losses, accounting shenanigans, and management turmoil.
It's not clear yet what this will mean about Bulmer's product line. Their
main products are Strongbow, Woodpecker, and Scrumpy Jack, all of which
we'd call "industrial ciders", but they have maintained a bit of quality
cider in niche products.
------------------------------
Subject: English ciders available in U.S.
From: Jen <jclaster@localnet.com>
Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 06:37:31 -0400
I've been doing some shopping around recently to try and find some
international ciders for sale here in the United States. I have found
Spanish and French ciders, but conspicuously absent have been any
English artisinal ciders. Do any American subscribers to this list
know of any good English ciders available here in the US?
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Some Thoughts on Defining Vintage and Traditional
From: rcd@talisman.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 22:31:37 -0600 (MDT)
I don't want to come along after Michael Kiley's lengthy but well-considered
note on cider styles, labels, etc., and just say "yeah, I agree...and with
that too!...and with that", although I do.
But rather, some random thoughts in response...don't try to find the plot
thread in this...
Michael did say:
> ...but there is a very distinct American
> cider tradition that need not bend the knee to any foreign sovereign.
I have to ask if this is true. I think there *was* an American cider
tradition, but it seems to be something we mostly read about from the 18th
century. And the US has suffered a particular plague, namely Prohibition.
That probably did far more to damage American cider than phylloxera did to
French wine...because it caused a change of attitude that we're still
fighting today (and most of us hadn't been born when it was repealed!).
Rather, I'd argue that we're trying to re-discover (more like re-invent)
American cider. We have various English and Norman apples to work with,
and we have some of our own known to be good for cider.
But face it! We're not going to end up with *an* American cider style! The
country is too big and too diverse. Those crazy New Englanders put raisins
in their cider and beans in their ears, f'heaven's sake! No, I don't know
why, because they can grow perfectly good cider apples without the raisins.
Still, as Tevye says in _Fiddler_, "...it's a tradition". (but one of many)
As to labels like "vintage", "traditional", and "real"...Michael's right
that if we don't assign meaning to some labels, it will be done for us, and
we won't like the answers! It's not so much important that we assign a
noble meaning to each plausible term, as that perhaps we find one term we
can use, and own, to describe real cider (oops, there I used one without
claim to it!:-).
I've had endless e-discussions about terms and labels, and also about cider
guilds and trade-associations and advocacy groups and so on. It seems there
is not even a glimmer of hope for a consensus. There isn't a lot of inter-
est (that I can find) for an organization, and perhaps the only real impetus
is that an organization might fill a void which will otherwise be filled
by an industry group (for example) that will be a lot worse than what we
would want. The counter-argument is that if an organization is created but
then co-opted by (say) alco-pop cider, it would have been better if it had
not been created in the first place.
As to label terms and/or standards, one of the curious side-paths I followed
was to ask the Brits. There was a good discussion in earlier months of this
year on the UK cider group about what is, or is not, good cider, and what it
might be called. I think there were a lot of good but slightly divergent
views, and although it never settled on an expressed consensus, some actual
near-consensus did exist for some folks. The curious (and somewhat disturbing)
aspect was that there is a side-group of CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale)
called APPLE (apple mumble pear mumble liaison mumble...sorry) which is
really quite uninterested in taking any sort of position on quality cider
(what they would like to call "real cider") other than, as far as I can
tell, that it contain live yeast. There's nothing in CAMRA/APPLE that will
lead the way, show a direction, so to speak. In fact (OK, I've ranted about
this before, but it's almost time to renew the rant) the APPLE page on the
CAMRA web-site still presents a view, now almost a decade old, that a Bulmer
alco-pop cider (half of it is fermented sugar-water) is an accepted example
of a proper, traditional, "real cider".
Bottom line: No help there. Plenty of good cider in the UK, but we in the
US won't learn anything about defining or labeling it (except possibly by
counterexample).
oogh. Enough!
Dick Dunn rcd@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA
...Without love in the dream, it'll never come true.
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End of Cider Digest #1039
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