An English Vintage
This year will remain famous in country annals for the superabundance of apples, especially of bitter-sweets or cider apples. Trees of Rayon d'Or broke themselves in pieces with the weight of fruit and single trees bore as much as half a ton. As a rule the cider makers have to import large cargoes of cider apples from France and even from Spain. This year the home crop was more than sufficient even though, it is reckoned, the manufacture of cider will exceed all the records. Owners of private orchards have been unable even to give away their superfluity of cooking or of dessert apples. These, of course, are, or should be, of small use to the cider makers, who divide apples not into cookers and eaters but into cider apples and pot apples ; and the pot apples, even Cox, are judged greatly inferior chiefly because of their lack of tannin. The cider apple has one other virtue : its firmness make's it superior to all others in the composition of mincemeat! A good many apples have been saved by the extra sugar allowed to Women's Institutes, and a properly cooked and compounded apple cheese will last indefinitely.
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