A good deal has been said of late in the
Press in regard to the question of cyder. For ourselves, we believe that an increased consumption of cyder in substitution for that of beer, cheap wines, and spirits would be most beneficial to the community. But, as was pointed out by one of the writers, cyder is of many kinds, and there is bad as well as good cyder. When men drink bad wine and are made ill, they do not say that wine does not suit them, but that sour wine, or sweet wine, or some particular brand of wine is poison to them. In the case of "apple wine," a man who has blindly taken a bottle of badly made or adulterated cyder, when he is made ill condemns all cyder as poison to him. What is wanted is classification in cyders as in wines. People should distin- guish between the makers of cyder and the kinds of cyder, as they do between champagne and claret, or, again, Perrier-Jouet and Mumm. It is a pity there are not ayder merchants, as there are wine merchants, who would select the best brands, and deal with all the makers and growers so as to be able to match exactly their customers' requirements. Another matter of great importance is the need of attend ing to our orchards. Unless we do that it is useless to think of making really good cyder. A dirty process will make bad cyder out of good apples, but the cleanest and. most scientific methods will not make really fine cyder out of poor and badly grown apples.
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