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An American classic beefs up the trendy appletini
• by Anne Earney - Photo by Sauce Staff Photographer
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I�ve never been a big fan of hard cider. I�ll drink it � but I usually don�t order it on my own. However, once I give it a sip, I�m in for the night. Hard cider is pretty darn tasty: subtle, a little sweet, substantial. Yet I forget to order it.
So with a little kind prompting, I sought out hard cider and tried it in a mixed drink: the apple martini.
I�m not really an apple martini person, but I�ll get to that. First, the cider.
Back in pre-temperance days, �cider� always meant the adult version, which was favored by some of the founders of our country. These days, �hard cider� is used to indicate the adult version, made by fermenting apple juice (creating alcohol and carbonation), while �cider� has been reduced to a non-fermented beverage. Hard cider also used to be the American drink, as popular as Budweiser is today. It�s said that John Adams drank cider for breakfast, to soothe his stomach. (Isn�t that why we all want to drink cider for breakfast?) Farmers planted apple orchards so they could make more of it. To not drink cider was ... you know, un-American.
John D. McGurk�s Irish Pub in Soulard has Strongbow on draft. Strongbow, an import from England, has a slightly sweet, smooth taste reminiscent of nonalcoholic cider, but better. Strongbow has dubbed itself �the most popular cider in the United Kingdom,� where its parent company, Bulmers, has been fermenting apples since 1887.
�I love the cider, especially in the summer,� said McGurk�s bartender Andrew Durbin. �I prefer Strongbow to Woodchuck, which is too sweet,� referring to a brand of American-made cider McGurk�s carries � not to be confused with Woodpecker, also made by Bulmers, which McGurk�s does not carry. The level of sweetness in hard cider is determined not by the apples, but by the amount of sugar added during the fermentation process.
Besides the Snakebite (McGurk�s is a mix of hard cider and lager), Durbin makes an apple martini with Strongbow. Under normal circumstances, I would never order an apple martini. It seems to me that apple martinis are what people drink when they don�t really want to taste alcohol. When I worked as a server at a restaurant where the martinis were strong (as martinis are supposed to be, by the way), more apple martinis were sent back for watering down than any other type. Clearly, this was not my drink.
But the addition of hard cider gives the popular libation a slightly more complex taste, without losing any of the tart, candy quality that earned it so much devotion from others. Durbin starts with whatever vodka his patron prefers, then adds DeKuyper Sour Apple Pucker schnapps and Strongbow. He said he previously used apple-flavored vodka, �but people like it more without the apple vodka; there�s not as much apple bite.�
While Durbin has only tasted his version of the apple martini
once � a choice I totally understand � he said, �I�ve had a lot of people request it.� I still won�t be among them � I went back to Strongbow by itself after I�d finished mine. (This is just my personal taste and in no way a reflection on Durbin�s skills as a mixologist. If you like apple martinis, you�ll probably like his version.)
Perhaps the apple martini�s popularity will wane, just as the popularity of cider did after Prohibition, when churchgoing farmers went so far as to chop down their apple trees. Actually, hard cider is on the rise again, with more people drinking and making the brew. While many brands seem to be coming out of Europe right now, more and more Americans are rising to the challenge set out by Adams and his ilk: Help your countrymen and women by drinking good, hard cider.
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