Every autumn, I buy a gallon of apple cider from Quig’s Orchard in Mundelein. Quig’s has been pressing for half a century, since a time when Lake County was as Up North as Wisconsin, but these days the orchard is an island of apple trees beleaguered by the aluminum tide of subdivisions. I go for their unpasteurized cider. It’s the virgin juice, with none of the flavor or impurities boiled away. After a few weeks in the refrigerator it starts to ferment, and then it sparkles across the tongue like whiskey and frost.
I just about was. Starting this year, fresh apple cider is almost illegal. When I went to Quig’s in September, the cider lady wouldn’t sell me any.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Unpasteurized cider had always seemed so pastoral, so wholesome. Now the health department was branding it deadlier than grain alcohol. I figured that if Illinois wouldn’t let me drink it, I could find my cider in some neighboring state, one that didn’t have laws against apples or guns or cigarettes or alcohol or anything else that only kills people who have no common sense. Surprisingly, none of the Indiana orchards sold all-natural cider. But I was planning a trip to the east coast in October, and I figured if any place respects an autumn tradition, it’s New England. I called my friend Bill, an English professor at Keene State College in New Hampshire.
“We’ll find you some real apple cider here,” he promised. “New Hampshire’s motto is Live Free or Die. That’s gotta be good for something.”
It turns out the state of Illinois didn’t crack down on apple cider; the feds did. Ten years ago most of the cider you bought at an orchard or supermarket was all-natural. But then came the Odwalla incident. In the fall of 1996 dozens of people caught E. coli from a batch of apple juice pressed by the California company. A 16-month-old Colorado girl died. The bacteria may have gotten into the juice because Odwalla used apples that had fallen in a cow pasture. But it wasn’t just a sanitation problem: Scientists had never seen E. coli that could survive the acidity of apples. This was a robust strain. The Food and Drug Administration determined to keep it away from children. This year it banned unpasteurized cider from large supermarkets. Small stores–like that food co-op in Vermont–can sell it until January 2004. After that, fresh apple cider will be legal only at the mill where it’s pressed, and then only with the warning label.
(When I made my under-the-table cider buy at Quig’s last fall, I was getting the final drops of the 2000 vintage. The orchard froze it for home vintners. Pasteurized cider won’t harden into a sot’s delight, because the 160-degree heating that kills off harmful bacteria also kills off the yeast that’s essential for fermentation. “Some people have been making apple wine for years, and they usually come in and buy five or six gallons,” Bob Quig said. “There aren’t many these days. I guess the idea of making home cider is kind of over-the-hill.”)
“When we had the orchard, we’d put a jug on the shelf, loosen the cap, and let it go,” he said. “You never knew what you were going to get. You’ve got to hit it just right.”
