The history and origins of cider

I am an accredited Pommelier (cider sommelier) and I am in a group of cider advocates intent on encouraging people to rethink cider. I’m firmly in the 100% juice brigade thinking of cider as apple wine. That’s what seventeenth-century English aristocrats did, an era when cider had an elevated position – King Charles I was said to prefer cider over wine. If only Queen Elizabeth II was a cider drinker, then cider would regain its past glory and be borne the respect it deserves.

Cider was consumed in the Roman empire, ancient Greece and the Middle East and the name itself probably derives from the Hebrew shekar or Greek sikera meaning ‘strong drink’. There is evidence that Celts in Britain made cider from crab apples as long ago as 3000 BCE, but the Roman invasion introduced apple cultivars and orcharding techniques to England. After the end of Roman occupation and once the Dark Ages began there is little information about cider in Britain, although cider-drinking Vikings and Anglo-Saxons colonised in this period so we can assume (although there is no proof) that apples were still being pressed and the juice fermented.

After the Normans invaded in 1066 they improved cider-making in this land forever by introducing tannic and acidic cider apples. They planted orchards and (very importantly) brought advanced pressing technology with them to make the extraction of juice from apples more efficient. Norman means 'North Man', and many of them were Vikings that had moved south from Scandinavia in the early ninth century. Vikings were keen cider drinkers and this explains why in France, a land dominated by wine, there is a proud tradition of cider in Normandy which exists to this day.

By the beginning of the fourteenth century, cider was being made in almost every county in England as far north as Yorkshire. As agriculture and market gardening increased during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so did orcharding and cider-making on a commercial basis. Soil conditions and climates in counties such as Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Somerset suited apple cultivation perfectly, and even today the West Country is the leading cider-producing region. It’s also home to the world's largest cider maker HP Bulmer.

Between the fourteenth and nineteenth century western Europe underwent The Little Ice Age. Apples can survive cooler temperatures whereas grapes need a warmer climate, and so began a golden age for cider at the expense of wine. Two political factors had a major impact. War with France and Spain interrupted wine, brandy and sherry imports into England, while the English Civil War and subsequent execution of King Charles I in 1649 made aristocratic courtiers redundant. They retired to their country estates and some of them started experimenting with cider, cross-pollination of apple cultivars, glassware and corks. There’s evidence that seventeenth-century cider-makers were producing sparkling cider using a secondary fermentation in reinforced glass bottles sealed with corks on papers stored in the archive of the Royal Society in London. The significance of this is that they were doing it before the man widely credited as inventing Champagne, Dom Perignon, was born. West Country cider-makers were the precursors of one of France's greatest sources of national pride.

During the Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815) British farmers were pressured into producing grain and livestock to ensure a domestic supply. Consequently, cider orchards were neglected. As nineteenth-century commercial cider producers increased in size, small farmers started selling their apple-growing land to those powerful businesses. Ancient orchards were destroyed and with them old cider apple cultivars. By the 1960s big producers were using fewer tannin-rich, intensely flavoursome apple varieties, preferring apples that would make easy-drinking and unchallenging cider. This meant that once again heritage apple cultivars were lost.