![]() ![]() As soldiers traveled to parts of the country they’d never visited before, they learned of new local drinks, and in some places that meant applejack. There are several other mentions of applejack in Civil War memoirs and stories. The potion was known also by the names of Dew of the Orchard and Jersey Lightning, as we learn from History of the 118th Pennsylvania Volunteers Corn Exchange Regiment from their Engagement at Antietam to Appomattox (1905), p. Thanks, though, to and Google Books, we all have impossibly voluminous libraries at our ready disposal, so I went to the latter to plunder it. I’m somewhat surprised to find no reference to the libation in two dipsological books I have to hand, Kingsley Amis’ Everyday Drinking and Iain Gately’s Drink. Since applejack has some history to it, I thought it might be worthwhile to make a foray into some possible witnesses to its history. The taste, in my limited experience with it so far, at least, has sweetness, to be sure, but not too much, and its ease of potation belies, I suspect, its alcoholic strength. The first encounter is, of course, olfactory, one vaguely of American whiskey but with an unmistakeable overtone (not undertone) of apples. I’ve not tried it in any cocktail yet, or on ice, only a few sips neat. Their product is said to have the residuum of six pounds of apples in every bottle, and it’s eighty proof. According to the bottle’s label, William Laird first made a batch of it in 1698 in Monmouth, New Jersey. I don’t know how many brands produce applejack, but Laird’s seems to be the most widely available. (I recall from Botany of Desire the observation that apples have not always had the predominant flavors they now have, and cider then and cider now, and by extension any applejack transmogrified therefrom, wouldn’t necessarily taste the same.) While I live in Minnesota, and could conceivably make my own applejack the old-fashioned way - assuming we actually have a proper winter next season - using some good natural hard cider (such as Crispin), it’s good to know that liquor stores also carry it already made, but given its comparative unknownness, it might take some hunting around to find. At least twice someone drinks a Jack Rose cocktail, which was unknown to me, so like a worthy explorer I looked around and found that the recipe’s main (in fact, only) alcohol is applejack, the old American colonial concoction made by freeze-distilling (hard) cider, that is, in wintertime gradually removing the chunks of ice that form in it, thus reducing its water component and strengthening everything else, including, of course, the alcoholic content. ![]() There are a great many references to drinking, mostly wine in prodigious amounts, but also beer and Pernod. I’ve recently finished reading The Sun also Rises. ![]()
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