ENGLISH AND FRENCH CIDER

Press, Volume XLVI, Issue 7258, 18 January 1889, Page 6

ENGLISH AND FRENCH CIDER

Morning Post.

A Cider Exhibition which is to be opened at Paris in the course of a few days will be something novel in its way, and ought to yield our English farmers engaged in the manufacture of the beverage some useful hints anent the treatment of the apple tending to improve the, quality of their produce. It is, no doubt, quite true that the cidermen of Hereford, Worcester. Devon, and Dorsetshire turn out occasion" ally some excellent stuff, and that English cider of fine growth and really good make has fetched in the open market as much as £20 a hogshead direct from the press, a price equal to that paid for many of the better wines of France and Germany. Bat it cannot be denied that the quality of the average produce consumed in some of our cider districts leaves very much to be desired indeed. Anything and everything is considered good enough for the press, if it only possess the one essential quality of tartness, and is sour enough for the purpose. Fruit that is blown and worm eaten, battered and bruised, the very windfalls and gleanings of the orchard that are really fit for nothing but the swilltub, find their way, along with sundry and all unmarketable pickings, to the. cider vat ; and with what result; may easily be imagined. The beverage is not merely inferior in flavour and deficient in aroma; and devoid of the true characteristics of cider, but will not keep. It is neither more or less than apple vinegar, unwholesome as unEleasant, and in many parts the wary farm and, who knows the stuffarid has tried it, will never take cider except when there is no possible chance of getting anything stronger or better to drink. On the other side of the Channel a good deal has been done in late years to improve the quality of the beverage by carefully selecting the varieties of apple _ best suited for cider making, and by the introduction of most scientific methods of preparing it. Indeed some of the most eminent of French scientists have not thought it beneath them to devote time and trouble to a thorough study of what is really one of the most important branches of mixed husbandry in the northern departments of the Republic. France, it should not be forgotten, is not only the greatest wine-producing country in the world; it is also the largest manufacturer of cider. The extent of the industry is quite unsuspected On this side of the Channel, where, by the way, no statistics are available as to the annual product of cider. Official figures show that the average yearly make inFrancereaches the enormous total of about twelve million hectolitres; and taking the value of the beverage at lOfr. the hectolitre, this represents a net annual sum of 120,000,000fr. The total yield of wine in the whole of the sixty-eight departments which are devoted to viniculture in France is only thirty million hectolitres, or about two-and-a-half times the quantity of cider produced; a fact which shows the magnitude assumed by the industry since St. Radegonde—as Frenchmen assert—made cider herregular beverage in the year 587. The chief cider districts lie in the stretch of country between Cherbourg on the north and Le Mans on the south, and is bounded east and west by Paris and Finisterre. In this region, better known to readers of English history by the old names of theprovinces, Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Brittany, the culture of the pommier a cidre is one of the chief occupations of the people. The orchards run on for mile after mile, and the apple harvest is only second in importance to the ingathering of the vine. The five northern orchard of France produce twothirds of all the cider that is manufactured in the country. And the peasants of Normandy and Bretagne when they take their cabbage soup still prefer as an accompaniment a draught of their home-made beverage before all the vaunted vintages of the South, as they did when Sterne penned his " Sentimental Journey " more than a century ago. It is probably from this part of ancient France that we gained our knowledge of cider making in this country. The Hereford orchards were not planted until the time of Charles 11., in whose days the drinking of cider began to be general, though the beverage bad been in use for about a century previously. Gerard, who published his "Herbal" in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, refers to a " worshipful gentleman,' one Mr Roger Badnome, living near Hereford, who "had so many trees of all sortes that the servants drink, for the most part, no other drink but that j which is made from apples. The qua'.itie is such that, by reporc uf the gentleman himselfe, the parson hafcli for tythe many hogsheads of cyder.' . It was hoped when the cultivation of : the cider apple was begun in England that the beverage would supersede altogether the use of foreign wines, but this result has.no more been attained here than in France. Nearly the whole of the French cider is consumed at home, only atout ten thousand hectolitres finding; its , way to foreign countries, in all probabilky'to French colonies. The yield varies unaccountably from year tp year. Some seasons the cider crop is as great a,failure as the vine; in others the harvest is beyond all expectations. Thus in the year 1881 the total cider produced was only five and a half million hectolitres; in 1883 if was over twenty-three and a half million, or within one-fourth of the total yield of wine, estimated at thirty million hectolitres.

It would be well if the consumption of cider were much more general in this country than it is. Not so long ago there was a dead set against the beverage on the part of the medical fraternity, who asserted that it tende t to hinder digestion and promoted intestinal troubles. Bat this is all changed now, and cider is being recommended as one of the most wholesome drinks men can take ; second only, in fact, to good sound wine. It is claimed for cider that it contains all the constituents found in the mineral waters of Vichy and Vals, and its habitual use is calculated to be of the utmost possible benefit to persons of a gouty tendency or iiable to calculus. For sedentary livers cider is the beverage. Rich in phosphate and containing a greater portion of tannin than the best Burgundy, it regulates internal functions and forms a natural .stimulant of great value. Many who have tried cider have pronounced it poor and watery, sour, and chill to the stomach. But such have not had the genuine product offered to them— cider of good make and quality, that is. They have tried the poor and sloppy and acid compound which passes for cider with most people. And it is about as fair to judge of real cider by such samples as to form an opinion upon the merits of high-class wine on the strength of a bottle of " Gladstone " claret at lOd., or the "fine nutty sherry" at eighteenpence shown in the cheap grocer shops. Good cider is brisk as champagne; clean on the palate as a dry sherry, mild as milk to the stomach, and rich in the various mineral constituents required in the animal economy. Its regular use is said to be conducive to vigour, as Lord Bacon 'long ago observed, and it is nowadays pointed out that in all districts where cider is the common drink of the country folk the women are better bnilt, better developed, and have finer complexions than in those parts where wine is the general beverage. Last, and not least, cider is stated to be one of the best remedies for, or rather preventives of obesity, and judging by the demand that appears to exist for some prophylactic of the kind, this fact alone should interest large numbers of the oatside publio in the exhibition about to be held at Paris, besides the fanners and cidermen of our orchard counties, who would naturally be attracted by it.