American Cider: A Modern Guide to a Historic Beverage

“Not just a thorough guide to the history of apples and cider in this country but also an inspiring survey of the orchardists and cidermakers devoting their lives to sustainable agriculture through apples.”—Alice Waters
 
“Pucci and Cavallo are thorough and enthusiastic chroniclers, who celebrate cider’s pomologists and pioneers with infectious curiosity and passion.”—Bianca Bosker, New York Times bestselling author of Cork Dork

Cider today runs the gamut from sweet to dry, smooth to funky, made from apples and sometimes joined by other fruits—and even hopped like beer. In American Cider, aficionados Dan Pucci and Craig Cavallo give a new wave of consumers the tools to taste, talk about, and choose their ciders, along with stories of the many local heroes saving apple culture and producing new varieties. Like wine made from well-known grapes, ciders differ based on the apples they’re made from and where and how those apples were grown. Combining the tasting tools of wine and beer, the authors illuminate the possibilities of this light, flavorful, naturally gluten-free beverage.

And cider is more than just its taste—it’s also historic, as the nation’s first popular alcoholic beverage, made from apples brought across the Atlantic from England. Pucci and Cavallo use a region-by-region approach to illustrate how cider and the apples that make it came to be, from the well-known tale of Johnny Appleseed—which isn’t quite what we thought—to the more surprising effects of industrial development and government policies that benefited white men. American Cider is a guide to enjoying cider, but even more so, it is a guide to being part of a community of consumers, farmers, and fermenters making the nation’s oldest beverage its newest must-try drink.

Dan Pucci is one of the nation's leading cider experts. He was the founding beverage director at Wassail, New York City's first cider bar and restaurant, and has since traveled the country in a continued pursuit of cider education, awareness, and research. He is a partner in Wallabout Hospitality, a New York City-based consulting and hospitality company.

Craig Cavallo lived in New York City for thirteen years, working in restaurants, blogging about food trends, and writing for Saveur. His work has been published in Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, New York magazine's Grub Street, Thrillist, and Vice Munchies. He left New York City for the Hudson Valley, and when he's not at Golden Russet Cafe & Grocery, the café that he owns and operates with his wife, Jenny, he can be found picking fenceline apples and dabbling in his own cellar cider experiments.