[Archivist]

Wild Apples for Cider (PDF of archived thread)

[Andy and Polly Brennan]

Hello all (from the newly re-zoned 7a Catskills,)

I hope to continue the archived discussion on the new website.
Looking at older posts concerning apples for cider, particularly wild apples, I hear too much emphasis on variety. WAAAAAY too much.

It’s about Nature AND Nurture. In fact, I’d go so far as to say over 50% of the quality comes from how the tree is growing. In terms of the immeasurables, I’ve always found wild apples to beat farmed apples and I’m convinced that Macs on abandoned 150-year-old trees are more soulful and useful to a cidermaker than a bin of English bittersweets grown hydroponically (aka, Bud9). It’s about expression, bush-orchards are bush-league.

If I hear one more word about Yarlington Mill!
Come on artists, where are you? Are we going to let commercial interests take over cider? Get your head out of the Man’s-in-control mindset and discover how great cider (interesting cider) is made by the forces of Nature, not by hipster wine-makers, not gene-slicing lab rats or nurserymen, not by efficiency-minded farmers. And it’s DEFINETELY

not made by our expectations!!!

If you just want a value-added product, then alright, call Scott Labs and stay off the HOLISTIC orchard website, but if you want to talk about the ART of cider, YOU’RE LOOKING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!
What does the tree want to express? And how can you step aside and let it speak?
(Hint, it happens in the soil)

Andy Brennan
The guy who wrote Uncultivated

[Leslie Wade]

I wish I’d heard this message some years ago. It’s a good one. It’s easy to get swept up with the romance of historic preservation at first and ignore the value of wild apples and chance seedlings. I will say though, that wildlings are abundant in the northeast but not as much the farther you go south. They’re here but you have to look pretty hard and gain access to private property. Our Confederate flag-flying neighbors here in Southern Appalachia will shoot first and ask questions later so caution is always in order. – Leslie

[Steve Dagger]

Yes, thanks for the wild apple battle cry, Andy. For me, cider making will always be a blend of creatively combining what ever apples I have access to according to how they taste, smell and feel in the mouth and which wild yeasts manage to predominate in the must. No desire to create a uniform, marketable product. Just the satisfaction of, when I’m lucky, getting to taste (and share) some really good cider that I made myself.