A STUDY OF CIDER MAKING IN FRANCE, GERMANY, 



AND ENGLAND. 



INTRODUCTION. 



in the United States cider has been in the past too generally 

 regarded as a product of very little importance from a commercial 

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

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

 beverage. Yet from the etymology of the word it is certain that the 

 name is very ancient, and that cider was the wine or strong drink, 

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

 which populated northern Europe before the dawn of history. A 

 study of the words used to denote the apple and the beverage made 

 from it shows that the fruit and the wine were known before the races 

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

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

 before the Roman conquest. a The word cider as used by English- 

 speaking people is the same as the Latin cicera, Spanish sidra, Italian 

 sidro, and French cidre. 



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

 tained the word cider as a pure German word, but the beverage made 

 from the fruit of the apple is classed as a wine (apfel wein}. 



BEGINNING OF THIS INVESTIGATION. 



The subject of working up the low-grade apples left as an unmer- 

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

 for some years attracted the attention of the writer, and experimental 

 work on this subject has been done in the horticultural department 

 of the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station for the past eight 

 years. Several preliminary reports of this work have been published 6 

 from time to time, intended to encourage local efforts 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. 

 b Bulletins 48, 57, and 71, Va. Agr. Expt. Station. 



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