It’s time for the rise of cider

With much discussion about the no and low alcohol revolution in restaurants’ beverage and pairing offerings, it could be that the time is ripe for an oft-overlooked product that deserves a reappraisal: apple cider.

I sometimes wonder how the world of wine, craft beer, mixology, and no alcohol pairings and bar menus get constantly reinvented and upgraded according to new tastes and trends and yet apple cider stays in the same, barely noticeable segment, only wheeled out to summer evening beer gardens, and often left off the high-end restaurant menu altogether.

Apart from pockets of ancient cider tradition in the UK, Spain, Germany, and France, much of the Western world has abandoned the art of turning apples into the amber-hued nectar of cider.

It seems a strange anomaly in the current food and beverage trend that emphasizes seasonality, local sourcing, reduction of waste, and the usage of heirloom varietals in every ingredient.

Natural wine is a global phenomenon, and yet most natural wines are shipped thousands of miles, to areas where grapes aren’t grown, where a culture of wine drinking is barely a hundred years old, while locally, apples are left to rot on the ground in ancient heirloom orchards. The potential for micro-brewing of locality-specific ciders could enhance a restaurant’s sustainability credentials but equally tie an area’s culture and agricultural history and identity into its gastronomic experience, elevating the offering. It’s important that the restaurant serves as more than an eating and drinking house, and that the chefs and sommeliers are uniquely placed to act as a fulcrum for historical and cultural expressions of the human relationship with the land.

Cider can be produced on a small scale, a sort of hyper-locality, meaning that small producers have a lot of room for variety of expression and refinement. Of course, the increasing number of micro cider breweries that are springing up in countries like the UK, emphasize natural, traditional techniques, with no additives, no added sugar, and even no added water, just pure juice.

Consider the incredible variety in color, flavor, and body of the apple fruit, how some present as bitter, others sweet, some mellow, and some vibrant. When you really look at the potential inherent in the produce itself, it’s impossible not to get excited about how high-end cider could work in beverage pairings in the best restaurants.

Specialty ciders have already infiltrated the world of fine dining, like Malus Mama, an ice-concentrated sweet Basque apple cider without appellation. The fruit comes from Astigarraga, a village 5km from the outskirts of San Sebastian. It is a special project of winemaker Iñaki Otegi. Sweet and thick, the cider is often served in place of a dessert wine or with cheese and enlivens the latter stages of a meal.

With so much potential for cider in the beverage and especially the high-end beverage sector, it is galling to read that even though the US is one of the biggest apple producers in the world, the fourth largest producer of the fruit behind China, the EU, and Turkey, last year, millions of apples were left to rot on the ground, going to waste and emitting CO2 into the atmosphere.  

A combination of market factors, a particularly abundant apple crop, declining exports, tariffs, and the effects of hail making the fruit disfigured, all conspired to make times very hard for apple growers. Waste definitely occurs in the wine growing business too, but growers and wine makers are so much further down the path of imagining innovative ways to repurpose and upcycle waste.

Consider finally, the cultural importance of the apple—the symbolic meaning and significance of the fruit. The symbol of knowledge, from the Book of Genesis, to Snow White, in countless mythologies, the apple is seen as a symbol of love, beauty, and wisdom. The biggest company with the highest cultural and economic impact in the world was born in the US and is called… well, you know.

The call for a broader and more elevated apple cider producing industry should be seen as more than an opportunity for artisan storytelling, but as a call to arms for the reduction of food waste and as a cultural revolution. A very delicious and enjoyable one.