A broadly defined craft cider made with at least some true cider or heirloom apples, giving more tannin and structure than a common cider while staying clean — free of the malolactic phenols or rustic funk of the European regional styles. Typically 6–9% ABV, straw to deep gold. Heirloom and multi-use varieties, crabapples, and tannic wildings each lend their own character, with moderate to high acidity and medium tannin.
In the glass
Origin
Heirloom cider is the modern craft expression of North American cidermaking, built on the revival of old cider and heirloom apple varieties. Hard cider was one of early America’s most common drinks before its orchards were devastated — first as Central and Eastern European immigration brought a lager-beer culture in the late 19th century, then as temperance campaigners uprooted and burned cider trees through Prohibition, leaving mostly dessert and cooking apples behind. The earliest push to revive American hard cider came in New England in the mid-1980s, and it grew by recovering surviving heritage fruit, catalogued from old orchards and propagated anew. The emblem of that recovery is the Harrison, one of the celebrated Newark cider apples praised in 1817 and thought extinct until a single tree was rediscovered in a New Jersey cider mill in 1976 and its wood saved and spread. The result is a cider with more tannin and structure than an everyday culinary-apple cider, yet cleaner than the rustic English, French, or Spanish regional traditions.
Notes
Heirloom cider sits between everyday common cider and the European regional styles: more tannic and structured than a culinary-apple cider, but without the malolactic funk of an English or French cider or the wild, acetic edge of a Spanish sidra. It is the home of much North American “craft” cider, where the cidermaker’s choice of heritage and bittersweet varieties drives the character.
Defining examples
Eve’s Cidery Autumn’s Gold·Farnum Hill Extra Dry·Redbyrd Orchard Cloudsplitter·Sea Cider Flagship·West County Cider Redfield