annieb123's Review of American Cider

by Dan Pucci and Craig Cavallo

“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.

To be posted to my blog at release: Nonstop Reader.

American Cider is an exhaustive and information dense survey of the history and current status of American brewed cider and listings of some notable modern cideries. Due out 2nd March 2021 from Penguin Random House on their Ballantine imprint, it's 384 pages (print edition) and will be available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is an almost academic treatise on the history of apples and cider as they intersect the USA and a *thorough* geographical breakdown of history and modern day cider brewing. Interesting asides are provided in highlighted text bars on diverse relevant subjects such as the temperance movement, apples & myths in the American frontier, and prohibition. The authors have also included general interest informational sections which contain a cool variety of tips and short tutorials such as how to taste and interpret cider, the language of description, storing cider, the future of cider, and many more. I say "almost" academic because there's a notable lack of references or bibliography for further reading.

This is emphatically *not* a glossy how-to, there are no recipes, and almost no graphics (there are very simple maps in the chapter headings for each of the eight geographical areas included in the guide). It is a definitive and unapologetic analysis of the not always comfortable history of immigrants and their apples & cider in America throughout history.

I would recommend the book as a superlative choice for brewers, cider lovers (the information about cideries would make a great tool for planning a tasting road trip when we can gather again), historians, orchardists, and the like. Definitive and exhaustive look at cider (my favorite hard potable).

Four stars. I felt the lack of bibliography and chapter reference notes rather keenly. For people who want to read a history of cider in the USA, this is a great one, and the rating will be 4.5-5 stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

American Cider

by Dan Pucci and Craig Cavallo

Reviewed by annieb123 on Feb 3, 2021

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