Cider
Cider is an ancient beverage. No-one knows when or where it was first made, because the native distribution of its principal component, the apple, is so widespread, from the Near East to Northwestern Europe. In the cider market, ciders can be broken down into two main styles, standard and specialty. The first group consists of modern ciders and heritage ciders. Modern ciders are produced from culinary apples such as Gala. Heritage ciders are produced from heritage, cider specific, crab or wild apples, like Golden Russet. Historically, cider was made from the only resources available to make it, so style wasn't a large factor when considering the production process. Apples were historically confined to the cooler climates of Western Europe and Britain where civilization was slow to develop record keeping. Cider was first made from crab apples, ancestors of the bittersweet and bittersharp apples used by today's English cider makers.
Cider in the United States
However the last quarter of the 20th century proved this region had ample potential for revival: records of how cider was once made were left untouched. The equipment for creating its sweeter, non-alcoholic cousin could easily be switched for hard cider and many of the old presses were still usable. The wine revolution in California had taken off and often beaten European varietals in taste tests, an important step proving the United States could make quality alcohol other than whisky and opening the floodgates to better quality, more modern machinery and tools in greater volume: some of this equipment can also be used in cidermaking, and in New England thus it became possible to order it by catalogue, by asking for the surplus from California winemakers, and by the early 1990s, by internet. Heirloom varieties still survived in more remote areas of the region, sometimes hidden on abandoned farm land, and there was contact with other countries that produced alcohol derived from apples such as Canada and Ireland, the latter country exporting it for the Irish expat community in Boston and the large Irish American population in the Northeast.