A STUDY OF CIDER MAKlXfi IN FRANCE, CERMANY, 



AND ENCLAND. 



INTRODUCTION. 



In the United States cider lui.s been in the past too oenerally 

 regarded as a product of very little importance from a conmiercial 

 standpoint, and it has been too often so made that most persons of cul- 

 tured taste have looked upon it with little approval when oflered as a 

 beveraee. Yet from the etvmoloov of the word it is certain that the 

 name is ver}^ ancient, and that cider was the wine or stront^ drink, 

 "shekar," of the Phoenicians, and was well known by the Aryan race 

 which populated northern Europe before the dawn of histoi'v. A 

 study of the words u.sed to denote the apple and the beverag-e made 

 from it shows that the fruit and the wine were known l)efore the I'aces 

 of northern Europe separated into Slavonians, Germans, and Celts, 

 and that the ancient Britons introduced the fruit into the British Isles 

 before the Koman conquest.* The word cidfr as used In' English- 

 speakino- people is the same as the Latin cicera^ Spanish sidrc Italian 

 sid/'o, and French cidre. 



The German language, on the other hand, seems never to have con- 

 tained the Avord cider as a pure German word, l)ut the beverage made 

 from the fruit of the apple is classed as a wine {('J>f(f ice/n). 



BEGINNING OF THIS INVESTIGATION. 



The subject of working u}) the low-grade apples left as an unmer- 

 chantable residuum of the apple crops grown in the United States has 

 for some 3'ears attracted the attention of the writer, and experimental 

 work on this subject has been done in the horticultural dei)artment 

 of the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station for the past eight 

 years. Several preliminaiw reports of this work have been published* 

 from time to time, intended to encourage local etiorts to utilize the 

 large quantities of unmerchantable fruit produced every year when 

 there is a fruit crop. 



These preliminary efforts served to awaken a strong interest in the 

 possibilities of making a pure sound cider from our apples, which 



«Sir George Bird wood quoted by Cooke in "Cider and Perry," p. 3. 

 l> Bulletins 48, 57, and 71, Va. Agr. Expt. Station. 



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