From the Living Museum
Honey Cider
- Origin
- Uncertain
- Era
- American or English (sparse records)
- Type / use
- Cider · Dual-purpose
Portrait to be revealed
History & Stories
Name suggests a sweet or honeyed cider character. Limited documentation; worth evaluating from my own fruit for cider potential.
Folklore & Name
Sparsely documented; name suggests a sweet or honeyed cider character. Likely an American or English selection valued for cider. Personal evaluation from my trees will add valuable data.
Digging into the History
Below my own notes, here is what the old fruit books and today’s collections record about this apple, kept apart from the stories people tell.
What we know
Big Horse Creek Farm, a North Carolina heirloom nursery, lists Honey Cider as another name for Honey Sweet 1. It says the famed apple collector Elwood Fisher found the apple growing in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley in the mid-1970s 1. The fruit is pale yellow flushed with pink, firm, juicy and very sweet, and ripens in August; the nursery calls it a cider and dessert apple 1.
What we think: stories & traditions
Where it came from before that. No source we found says who first grew it or when 1. Fisher found it; nobody seems to know where it started.
Sources
- Big Horse Creek Farm, "Honey Sweet" (also known as Honey Cider). bighorsecreekfarm.com/honey-sweet/
Curious about Honey Cider?
Email us at drgoss@honeytreeorchard.com.