Around 150 years ago, cider apple orchards thrived throughout New England and the Midwest, mostly due to apples being a fruit which flower late in the spring; they’re less vulnerable to late frosts in our colder northern clime. For centuries before that, many European migrants coming to North America made cider — rural families often kept a barrel of it at home at all times — cider was a part of the everyday table (just like the Germans with beer: cider was sometimes safer than water). Much of that has disappeared for us in the mid-Atlantic and New England now, as farming shifted over the years to practices of monoculture and toward marketing only a few clear and simple table apple varieties, making it easier for the commodity fruit market to sell apples to us in grocery stores.

This is why we’re so happy to share with you these wines below: in the last 50 years in particular, as we’ve been cut off from our fruit-wine heritage, many drinkers have assumed that wine grapes are in fact the ultimate or only fruit for delicious, expressive wine — but these delicate, dry examples with serious source fruit show that it’s a category of wine not to be underestimated. There’s a renaissance of this type of winemaking happening everywhere from New York to Oregon to Denmark to Switzerland — anywhere that’s cold enough where orchards do well, you’ll be bound to see beautiful fruit being made into vibrant, chilly-feeling bottles of wine. Perfect stuff to celebrate the turn into colder nights and heartier meals.

FEATURED PRODUCTS:

Cidrerie du Vulcain 'La Transparente' 2020

Metal House Cider 'Tazza' 2021

Rose Hill Farm Pommeau 2018

SHOP THE COLLECTION: Cider