The Spanish were making sidra when the Romans invaded Britain in 55 BC and found the Celts fermenting the juice of native crab apples to make cider.
Interest in cider in Britain faded after the fall of Rome because many orchards were abandoned when invading Jutes and Danes attacked British settlements.
After the Norman Conquest on 1066, cider consumption became widespread in England and orchards were established specifically to produce cider apples. The Normans had developed a number of apple varieties which they then introduced to England. In the 15th century, real progress was made in its presentation. Cider is a way of life.
During medieval times, cider was used to pay workers at the monasteries.
An English noble, Lord Scudamore, is credited worth having bottles cider as early as the 1640s, when almost all cider was stored in wooden barrels and drawn off ‘on draft’ as needed.
By the seventeenth century it was so beloved that the English wrote poems and songs about cider.
Cider production in England was estimated at 55 million gallons in 1900. In the early 1980s cider sales had risen to over 60 million gallons per year.
Apple cider in England
