Photos by Michael Piazza / Styled by Catrine Kelty

Most stories about Colonial American drinking revolve around domestic whiskey and beer production, the rums imported from the Caribbean or made locally from molasses from the islands, as well as brandies and wines brought from Europe. However, the apple played a major role in drinking culture here in the Northeast with a lot of the lore centered on one man born in Leominster: John Chapman.

Better known as Johnny Appleseed, Chapman was an American pioneer who started nurseries instead of orchards and sold 2- to 3-year-old apple tree seedlings in a wide swath of northern Appalachia and the Midwest beginning in the late 1790s. Many settlers bought these plants to make hard cider, with some of that alcoholic cider concentrated over the winter by freeze-distillation, akin to ice wine production, to make a product known as applejack.

Heat distillation—turning juice into apple brandy— removed impurities, but not everyone in these territories had access to such technology. In these parts, both sweetness and alcohol were hard to come by given that sugary crops didn’t grow well in this climate and the long transport times to procure them. Moreover, certain land grant ordinances facilitated Chapman’s business plan, requiring a settler to “set out at least fifty apple or pear trees” as part of the deed. Indeed, Henry David Thoreau wrote in 1862 in Wild Apples: The History of the Apple Tree, “It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.” Furthermore, Michael Pollan in The Botany of Desire proclaimed, “Really, what Johnny Appleseed was doing and the reason he was welcome in every cabin in Ohio and Indiana was he was bringing the gift of alcohol to the frontier. He was our American Dionysus.”

My wife and I were so smitten by the Chapman connection to Massachusetts that we threw a punch bowl party at home over a decade ago in honor of Johnny Appleseed’s birthday, and we replaced cognac and champagne in two classic recipes with apple brandy and sparkling hard cider, respectively. Much of Chapman’s work had been undone during Prohibition when cider apples were chopped down and edible varieties, generated by grafting, took over the orchards, but the spirit of his career has been reborn in recent decades.

In parallel with our shared interest in this aspect of old American drinking, a number of new producers have sprung up to create a wide variety of apple ciders, and also to join Laird’s (of Virginia, our nation’s longest continuously run distillery), in producing apple brandy. According to Dan Pucci and Craig Cavallo’s book American Cider, a post-Prohibition low of 10 American cideries in 1991 has turned into around a thousand producers today. Massachusetts orchards are undergoing this cider renaissance as well and are exploring styles ranging from bone dry to sweet, and utilizing heirloom apple varietals that impart greater tannic qualities and acidity than standard eating apples. The Massachusetts State government lists 22 producers and brands on its website, and that list is missing many local breweries that put out ciders or beer-cider hybrids, such as True North’s Five Leaves Left. And an ever-increasing number of distilleries are producing aged apple brandy including Short Path in Everett, Bully Boy in South Boston, Liberty Tree in Medfield, Bear Swamp in Ashfield, Beaver Pond in Petersham and Nashoba in Bolton.

Besides drinking on their own, soft and hard ciders and apple brandies are very mixable into cocktails. Sweet cider was a rarity until refrigeration came about to prevent its spontaneous fermentation, but it makes for a delicious cocktail ingredient and the combination of a soft cider as a mixer has been popular in Europe for years. I was introduced to the Stone Fence at Green Street Grill in Cambridge, described as the original New England highball. This Colonial-era drink is simply whiskey or rum mixed with cider (fermented or not), and it is what the Green Mountain Boys drank for courage in attacking Fort Ticonderoga in 1775. At Loyal Nine in Cambridge, I tinkered with the Stone Fence for Eater Boston’s Cider Week in 2015 to create a drink I dubbed the Tapestry of Stone, after a line from a Helen Keller poem “The Song of the Stone Wall.”

Sparkling hard cider has been a great addition to cocktails as a bubbly wine substitute that imparts a lot more character to the flavor profile than a similarly priced prosecco or cava. At Loyal Nine we always had a dry-style cider on tap to add to drinks like my Autumn Pimm’s Cup.

Finally, the most commonly utilized apple product in cocktails today is apple brandy, featured in such classics as the Jack Rose and the Marconi Wireless. The former captivated Boston bartenders so much that they formed the Jack Rose Society in 2005; the group ran through all the possible recipes to find just the right version to appear on the opening menu at (dearly departed) Eastern Standard Kitchen + Drinks. The latter (the Marconi Wireless) I love so much that I named one of my cats Marconi, and I riffed on the apple brandy- Manhattan-style drink by adding Scotch to the mix in my Old Number One.

While cloudy, soft apple cider is a fall treat, the rest of these products are available all year long and offer comfort and familiarity, conjuring up thoughts of gentle New England autumns. Local cider taprooms make for great day trips, and while the weather is still warm enough, go visit the various cider gardens with outdoor seating, like Lookout Farm in Natick and Nashoba Valley in Bolton. And throughout the year, think of selecting some local apple products for the cocktail hour. They work great on their own in recipes as well as paired with tequila, mezcal, whiskeys and gin. And while you are at it, raise a glass to Massachusetts folk hero John Chapman. Cheers!

This story appeared in the Fall 2022 issue.