With looking at activities in the SCA, there is often a strong desire to go back to whatever was available in the medieval era. The idea is if we want to know what they had or did, we have to do it as they did it and with whatever they had. We will often not be able to. It might actually be impossible. It might be too expensive. It might be too time consuming. But it might be possible and if nothing else, shows what an object would have been like.
However, for some items, it doesn’t hold meaning. I am in favor of stepping back and I have done so with planting my own apple trees. Is there any meaning with planting period apples, assuming I could find such a thing?
I was asked recently if I have tried making cider with period apples. The answer is no and the answer is also that it would not tell us anything. The reason is terrior.
Terrior is the expression of the land and environment in fruit. It is most often discussed with grapes. Other items exhibit it as well, coffee and tobacco, for example. And apples.
To explain it with examples, let’s take grapes. Pinot Noir is grown in several places around the world. Originally in France but also in California, Chile, and Australia. Does a bottle of wine, of the same grape, from each of these places taste different? Yes and to an expert, very different. Different enough that you wouldn’t recognize it as a Pinot Noir? Potentially. The composition of the soil is different in all of those locations. The amount of sunshine. The chemical composition of the water. But it is more than just a different continent. Vineyards located only a few miles from each other can also yield different flavors in the fruit.
But the land itself is just one part of it. There is a difference between the same grape in the same place but at a different time. Some years are “good” years. Some years are “bad” years. You can taste the difference of a bottle of wine made in the same vineyard but a different year. Again, the amount of rain, the amount of sun, the amount of heat, the number of pests, etc can all influence the flavor of the grape from year to year.
We also have to consider the evolution of yeasts, even of wild yeast.
Apples also exhibit terrior. According to a cider podcast I listen to, the same apple variety, grown just 20 miles away from each other, have a detectable different in terrior. With the nature of apples, apples of the same variety is often closely genetically related to each other. To reproduce the same variety, you cut a scion from the tree you want to grow more of and graft it on another rootstock. Many of the rare varieties are actually just cuttings from the same few trees. So, where you grow the apples has a huge influence on what the apple tastes like.
Let’s say I could get White Pearmains to try to make Norman cider from ~1200 AD. I could get those apples here in the US. Is the cider I make close to what the 13th century Normans made? Probably not. The climate is not the same. The soil in the US is not the same as the soil in 13th century Normandy. Even if I could get apples from Normandy, I am not necessarily making something similar to a 13th century Norman cider. As I have said above, even apples of the same variety only 20 miles away yield different flavors. It is likely closer but not guaranteed. I might make something that is similar to a “bad” year in 13th century Normandy.
This is why I say it is not meaningful. With the science of cider being what it is today, we have a good idea of what would make a good cider and what kind of apples a region might have. As long as we select apples with those qualities, then we are making a cider that is in the style of a historic cider. “Heirloom” apples are higher in tannins and closer to bittersweet and bittersharp apples. But taking the modern descendent of heirloom apple doesn’t necessarily help us because we can’t make the climate and soil conditions match back then.
Does that mean I won’t do it? No. I will likely at some point get period apples and make a cider from them. But that doesn’t make it a more authentic period cider because there are too many other factors that can’t be controlled.
I think it is more important to know what kinds of apples and what kind of process was used to make a cider in a given place.
