{"id":1298,"date":"2021-04-09T17:23:30","date_gmt":"2021-04-10T00:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cuisinestupide.com\/?p=1298"},"modified":"2021-04-09T18:47:50","modified_gmt":"2021-04-10T01:47:50","slug":"a-wicked-beverage-redeemed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cuisinestupide.com\/?p=1298","title":{"rendered":"A wicked beverage redeemed"},"content":{"rendered":"

If not for Prohibition, applejack, rather than whiskey, might be the most American of spirits. <\/p>\n

From the earliest days of colonization, the apple orchard was the source of our continent’s most popular liquor. As Julia Moskin detailed in a recent New York Times article<\/a>, the northeastern part of what would come to be called the United States was the birthplace of applejack, “the original moonshine,” a higher-alcohol version of apple cider that was as easy to produce as it was to imbibe.<\/p>\n

“In the 18th century, when the Blue Ridge Mountains were part of a remote western frontier, applejack was so prized that it was used as local currency,” Moskin wrote. “When the grower John Chapman came through<\/a> scattering the apple seeds that won him his nickname, it was not in the interest of providing colonists with more pies. It was because cider was both a lifesaving staple and a valuable form of legal tender …”<\/p>\n

So it’s not surprising that the rising temperance movement in the 19th century made applejack one of its chief villains. Check out the hysterical hyperbole in the first paragraph of this article from the Times in 1884:<\/p>\n

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(The rest of the article<\/a> is equally overwrought and hilarious.)<\/p>\n

By the end of Prohibition in 1933, Moskin writes, the apple orchards of the Northeast had largely been replaced by grain fields, and applejack was mostly forgotten\u2014until the recent hard-cider boom birthed a boomlet in small craft distilleries focused on reviving this historic beverage.<\/p>\n

My friends Jim and Sharon Stasiowski, cocktailians extraordinaire both, called my attention to Moskin’s Times article and its accompanying recipe: the Wright Flyer<\/a>, a complex applejack variation of the whiskey-forward Paper Plane<\/a>, created by Asheville, N.C., restaurateur Drew Furlough. For our Sunday Special<\/a> exploration of applejack, I decided to go with something simpler: the Apple Jack Cocktail, a recipe from The Artistry of Mixing Drinks<\/em><\/a> by Frank Meier, first published in 1934.<\/p>\n

Feel free to substitute Cointreau, Grand Marnier, or any orange liqueur for the cura\u00e7ao. The result is as snappy and succulent as a freshly picked apple.<\/p>\n

You won’t be needing the dynamite. And if you’re short on original poetry, let Dolly and her friends supply the verse:<\/p>\n