Mean Trees

Is this where Angry Birds build their nests?

 

Seen at Piedmont Grocery, Oakland.

From the Angry Orchard website:

Once upon a time hard cider was the drink of choice. We’ve been making ciders for decades… Now we want to share them with you. Branch out and experience our Angry Orchard.

“Hard” cider has about 5 percent alcohol. According to a press release, Angry Orchards ciders are “artisanal” (of course) and gluten free. The brand was introduced earlier this year in New England, Colorado, Maryland, and New York; last month it made its nationwide debut.

I couldn’t find an explanation for the brand name.* Maybe it takes a testy tree to make the bittersweet apples preferred for hard cider.

* But sharp-eyed reader Arma Virumque could, on the Origins page: “French bittersweet apples from Normandy are specifically selected and grown solely for making cider. ... Unlike other apple varieties, these apples are small and unattractive as table fruit, aggressively sharp and drying, to the point of looking angry.” 

__

Administrative announcement: I’m taking several days off (and mostly offline). Comment publication will be a little slower than usual. See you back here in about a week.

Comments

[mike]

Couple thots. One is that not only is hard cider a gluten-free food, it's also a fat-free food ("No trans fats!"). So it's doubly good for you.

As for cider, Michael Pollan (and I'm sure many others) have suggested that the keen interest that early settlers in North American had for apples -- including Johnny Appleseed -- was primarily for their keen interest in making hard cider. Turns out that most wild-grown apples are not edible, and our current breeds of "table apples" were both genetic accidents and are perpetuated by very careful grafting and husbanding of fruit-producing stock.) Fascinating botany, really.