The sweetest thing

Unpasteurized apple cider is somewhat of a passion of mine. Unlike most store-bought cider (which is pasteurized) or apple juice (filtered, pasteurized and often doused with preservatives), the good stuff is simply the juice of crushed apples. Taste it and you will be hard-pressed to return to drinking cider from the supermarket, which often has slight bitter flavors replacing the earthy fruit taste as a result of being heated to 160 degrees (the pasteurization process).

These days, untreated cider can only be sold from the orchard that produces it due to unfortunate federal regulations. The reason? A confluence of sloppy practices has, in the past, resulted in a few people getting sick. If one were to use apples from the ground – “drops” – instead of picked apples and if one were to own livestock and allow those animals to roam the orchards and to do their business wherever … well, you can probably see where this is going.

The overwhelming majority of orchards selling their cider to the public follow strict rules that prevent any of these variables from happening. Still, for a number of reasons, few of them continue to sell unpasteurized cider. Living in the city makes it even tougher to find and get to those places regularly.

In autumn I made occasional visits to Honey-Pot Hill Orchards in Stow, about an hour west of Boston, to buy cider, but they’ve shut down for the season. A little research on the ‘net led me to another farmstand in that same central Massachusetts community – Derby Orchards – and I’m happy to report that they are open and selling unpasteurized cider – at $3.75 a gallon, which is a good price – and plan to continue doing so into February. I picked up three gallons today, in fact. Bottoms up.