Cider apple
Cider is made in several countries and can be made from any apples. Historically the flavours preferred and varieties used to produce cider have varied by region. Many of the most traditional apple varieties used for ciders come from or are derived from those from Devon, Somerset and Herefordshire in England, Normandy in France, and Asturias in Spain, and these areas are considered to have their own broad cider styles although the many exceptions make this more of a historic footnote. Normandy cider is usually naturally carbonated and clear: Asturian cider apple varieties are mainly 'sharps' or mild 'bittersweets', producing a mildly acidic cider which is customarily served by being poured from height into the glass to oxygenate it.
Cider
Before the development of rapid long distance transportation, regions of cider consumption generally coincided with those of cider production. As such, cider was said to be more common than wine in 12th-century Galicia and certainly the idea of it was present in England by the Conquest of 1066, using crab apples: the word "Wassail" is derived from a Saxon phrase, wæs hæl": it is what would have been said by Saxons as a toast at Yuletide. Southern Italy, by contrast, though indeed possessing apples, had no tradition for cider apples at all and like its other neighbours on the Mediterranean Sea preserved the Roman tradition of apples as an ingredient for desserts, as evidenced by the frescoes at Herculaneum and Pompeii, descriptions by Classical writers and playwrights, and Apicius, whose famous cookbook does not contain a single recipe for fermenting apples but rather includes them as part of main courses, especially accompanying pork.