It was historically drunk fairly soon after distillation. Distillers freeze hard cider and then discard the ice, so the slushy liquid left over has a higher alcohol content. Historically, applejack was made with North American cider apples and produced through a method called “jacking” or freeze distillation. There are several ways that producers around the world and throughout millennia have fermented apples and distilled them into brandy. “We’re giving a rebirth to this historical spirit.” Five Types of Apple Brandy “It’s all word of mouth, and bartenders have been a driving force,” says Laird. Some believe that applejack is primed for a resurgence, though, in tandem with the 21st-century cocktail renaissance. “A lot of Prohibitionists cut down apple trees, and that’s how we lost a lot of heritage and historical apple varieties,” laments Laird.Īfter Prohibition was repealed, traditional apple brandy fell out of fashion in the U.S., replaced by other spirits.

Prohibition, however, altered many facets of American life-including applejack production and related agriculture. Edward’s 1919 bid for New Jersey governor, dubbed “ the applejack campaign.” The spirit was so popular, it became a lightning rod in anti-Prohibitionist Edward I. cocktail culture grew in the early 1900s, applejack was prominent in classic recipes like the Jack Rose. “If you were a farmer and you had apple trees on your property, you were producing cider spirits or applejack.”Ĭenturies later, as the U.S. “Applejack is so intertwined in the history of our state,” says Lisa Laird, the chief operating officer and world ambassador of Laird & Company, the New Jersey distillery was founded by William Laird’s descendants in 1780. Within about a century-and-a-half, the state was dotted in applejack distilleries. One early distiller was Scottish immigrant William Laird, who settled in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and began to produce his own applejack in 1698. drinkers, however, might be most familiar with applejack, an American-born apple brandy that originated in the late 1600s. Meanwhile, bätzi-an apple brandy from Switzerland-is at least a century old, estimates Astrid Gerz, the secretariat of the Swiss Culinary Heritage Association. He finds an early mention of Calvados, the apple brandy that hails from Normandy, France, at the start of the 19th century. Rowley believes that Arab rosewater distillation techniques may have inspired Europeans to try their hands at making brandy from local fruits-including tart cider apples-in the Middle Ages.īut specific references to apple brandy are more recent, Rowley writes.

He traces the origins of brandies to Uighurs in 7th-century China. “Any fruit with sufficient natural sugars may be fermented and distilled into brandy,” writes Matthew Rowley in The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails. Want to learn more? Here’s everything you need to know. craft distillers have bottled modern apple brandies, iterating on what some consider America’s oldest spirit. Today, the nature of the spirit continues to evolve. The history of apple brandy is fascinating, too, stretching all the way from the 7th-century Silk Road to colonial New Jersey and beyond. Production methods include continuous column stills, copper pot stills and a type of freeze distillation called “jacking.” There are clear, unaged versions that resemble eau de vie, and amber-hued apple brandies that spend years in oak barrels. The category is far more varied than perhaps first meets the eye.

Whether you call it applejack, Calvados or bätzi, at its core, apple brandy is any liquor made from fermented and distilled apples.

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