Bennett, an English traveller, writing of Boston in the year 1740, says that “the generality of the people with their victuals” drank cider, which was plentiful and good at three shillings a barrel. It took a large amount of cider to supply a family when all drank, and drank freely. Ministers often stored forty barrels of cider for winter use.
Cider Pitcher and Cups.
By the closing years of the seventeenth century nearly all Virginia plantations had an apple orchard. Colonel Fitzhugh had twenty-five hundred apple trees. So quickly did they mature, that six years after the scions were planted, they bore fruit. Many varieties were common, such as russets, costards, pippins, mains, marigolds, kings, and batchelors. So great was the demand for cider in the South that apple orchards were deemed the most desirable leasing property. Cider never reached a higher price, however, than two shillings and a half in Virginia during the seventeenth century. Thus it could be found in the house of every Maryland and Virginia planter. It was supplied to the local courts during their times of sitting. Many households used it in large quantity instead of beer or metheglin, storing many barrels for everyday use.
At a very early date apple trees were set out in New York, and cultivated with much care and much success. Nowhere else in America, says Dankers, the Labadist traveller, had he seen such fine apples. The names of the Newton pippin, the Kingston spitzenburgh, the Poughkeepsie swaar apple, the red streak, guelderleng, and others of well-known quality, show New York’s attention to apple-raising. Kalm, the Swedist naturalist, spoke of the splendid apple orchards which he saw throughout New York in 1749, and told of the use of the horse press in the Hudson Valley for making cider. Cider soon rivalled in domestic use in this province the beer of the Fatherland. It was constantly used during the winter season, and, diluted with water, sweetened and flavored with nutmeg, made a grateful summer drink. Combined with rum, it formed many of the most popular and intoxicating colonial drinks, of which “stone-wall” was the most potent. Cider-royal was made by boiling four barrels of cider into one barrel. P. T. Barnum said cider-spirits was called “gumption.”
A New Hampshire settler carried on his back for twenty miles to his home a load of young apple trees. They thrived and grew apace, and his first crop was eight bushels. From these, he proudly recounted, he made one barrel of cider, one barrel of water-cider, and “one barrel of charming good drink.” Water-cider, or ciderkin, was a very weak, slightly cidery beverage, which was made by pouring water over the solid dregs left after the cider had been pressed from the pomace, and pressing it over again. It was deemed especially suitable for children to drink; sometimes a little molasses and ginger was added to it.
A very mild tavern drink was beverige; its concoction varied in different localities. Sometimes beverige was water-cider or ciderkin; at other times cider, spices, and water. Water flavored with molasses and ginger was called beverige, and is a summer drink for New England country-folk to-day.
Parson’s Tavern.