In England and in several European continental countries apple wine (hard cider) is produced in important quantities. In fact, the coder of Normandy is nearly as famous as French Burgundy or Roquefort cheese.
In general, the process used is the same as that for making wine from grapes. Apple is first pressed and the pressed juice (must) is fermented.
Apple wines can commonly have a higher alcohol contents. Natural fermentation is suppressed by inoculation with pure, cultured yeast (cold-fermenting yeast). These wines will inevitably have been fermented using wine yeasts not natural or ale yeasts, since only wine yeasts are tolerant to the high alcohol levels.
The wine yeasts will impart their own flavor profile to the apple wine, moving it further away from a true cider.
Federal regulations define apple wine as ‘the product of the normal alcoholic fermentation of the juice of sound ripe apples, with or without the addition of cane, beet or dextrose sugar for the purpose of perfecting the produce according to standards, but without the addition or abstraction of other substances expect as may occur in the usual cellar treatment’.
Apple wine
