The Frankfurt Apfelwein house

The Bembel is a salt-glazed stoneware jug, grey with cobalt-blue decoration, made in the Westerwald pottery district. It is sold in a range of capacities from a single serving up to several litres, and the larger sizes are the point: the jug is a shared vessel bought for a table, and its stoneware body keeps the contents at cellar temperature rather than letting them warm.

The Geripptes is the glass — a small tumbler, characteristically holding a quarter or three tenths of a litre, moulded with a diamond pattern of ribs on its outside. Two explanations are given for the ribs and both are sound. Optically, the facets refract light through a naturally hazy drink so that it reads bright rather than dull. Practically, they give purchase to fingers greased by the food that is eaten alongside, which is a serious consideration when the alternative is a smooth glass and a hand that has just handled Rippchen.

The Kranz is the third object: a ring-shaped tray, usually of metal, holding a circle of filled Geripptes so that a server can carry many at once. It is a piece of service equipment, and it is also the origin of the word for a round of drinks in local usage.

A wreath or bunch of evergreen hung over the door signals a house serving its own Apfelwein. The convention belongs to a wider central European practice of advertising own-produce serving by a hung sign, related to the Austrian Buschen and the German Strauß, and its function is the same: it tells the passer-by that the drink inside came from this producer and that the premises are operating in that capacity.

Local dialect supplies the vocabulary. Ebbelwoi is the Frankfurt form of Apfelwein, and a Schoppen is a measure of it. The drink is commonly taken mixed — with sparkling water as sauergespritzt, with lemonade as süßgespritzt — and both mixtures are ordinary, established practice rather than a concession for people who do not like the drink.

The food repertoire is regional and specific: Handkäs mit Musik, a sour milk cheese dressed with onion, oil and vinegar; Grüne Soße, a cold herb sauce eaten with eggs and potatoes; Rippchen mit Kraut, cured pork with sauerkraut. All of them are acidic, salty or both, and they are eaten with a drink that is itself high in acid.

Apfelwein is fermented dry, is usually still or barely petillant, and is made largely from culinary and dessert-type apples rather than from tannic cider fruit, which gives a drink defined by acid rather than by tannin. It is often cloudy in the traditional presentation and is served cool but not cold.

Every element of the service follows from those properties. A dry, tart, low-tannin drink reads as bright rather than heavy and suits a shared jug; a hazy drink benefits from a faceted glass; a still drink loses nothing by being decanted from stoneware; a high-acid drink pairs with the salty and sour food that is served with it. This is a coherent system rather than a collection of quaint objects.

Hessian production sits within German fruit-wine practice and is supported by a substantial technical research tradition in juice and fruit-wine technology, which is one reason the regional product has remained consistent while comparable farm traditions elsewhere fragmented.

The concentration of houses in the Sachsenhausen district of Frankfurt is the best-known expression of the tradition, and it carries the usual consequences of concentration: some premises operate primarily for visitors, while others retain a local trade. The wider Hessian countryside holds a dispersed version of the same institution, frequently seasonal and attached to production.

The tradition has also acquired a defensive character. Apfelwein consumption in Germany declined over the later twentieth century, and regional bodies, museums and producers have promoted it as cultural heritage. That framing is itself a cultural fact worth recording: a drink becomes heritage at the point when it stops being ordinary, and the vocabulary of preservation around Apfelwein dates from its decline rather than from its prime.