How to Start an Apple Orchard for Cider

Take a close-up look at the process of managing an apple orchard and tips on apples that make quality homemade cider.

By Claude Jolicoeur
Updated on September 24, 2024
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by Adobestock/hansenn
trees full with ripe red apples in the netherlands

Manage your orchard with tips on how to start an apple orchard for cider, how far apart to plant apple trees, and apple orchard management.

How to Start an Apple Orchard: The Cider Orchard

I present here my personal views on how to manage an orchard to produce high-quality apples for cider. These views correspond to the way I manage my own small orchard. In particular, you will see that I believe the best apples for cider come from low-productivity orchards.

As mentioned above, the first principle to always bear in mind is that cider-apple growing is different. If you permit me an analogy with wine: could you imagine that a wine maker would make his wine from table grapes? Worse, could you imagine that a law would require a wine maker to be a commercial producer of table grapes in order to sell his wine? Table grapes and wine grapes are two different things; they are not grown in the same way or by the same people. Why should it be different for apples and cider? Well, even if the answer seems obvious, the reality isn’t always so simple.

For example, in Quebec in the 1970s, a law was voted to rule the commercial production of cider. This new legislation stipulated that only commercial apple producers could become cider makers and obtain the right to sell their products. The underlying intent was to find a market for surplus apples. Naturally, what had to happen did happen: the law provoked a boom in industrial cider production. But the quality wasn’t there because the cider wasn’t being produced from appropriate apples, and soon production decreased, as no one wanted to drink the cider, even if was very inexpensive.

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