Cider today runs the gamut from sweet to dry, smooth to funky, made with apples but also other fruits--and even hopped like beer. In American Cider, experts Dan Pucci and Craig Cavallo give a new wave of consumers the tools to taste, talk about, and choose their ciders, along with stories of the many local heroes saving heirloom apples and producing new varieties. Like wine made from well-known grapes, ciders differ based on the apples they're made from and where those apples were grown. Combining the tasting tools of wine and beer, the authors illuminate the possibilities of this light, flavorful, naturally gluten-free beverage.

And cider is more than just its taste--it's also historical, as the nation's first popular alcoholic beverage, made from apples brought across the Atlantic from England. Pucci and Cavallo use a region-by-region approach to illuminate how ciders and the apples they're made from came to be, from the well-known tale of Johnny Appleseed--which isn't quite what we thought--to the more surprising effects of industrial progress and government policy.

American Cider is a guide to drinking, but even more so, it is a guide to being part of a community of consumers, farmers, and fermenters making the nation's oldest beverage its newest must-try drink.