Glossary · History
Early bottling
Definition
The seventeenth-century English practice of bottling cider with residual sugar in strong glass so that it refermented and sparkled — documented decades before comparable techniques are recorded for wine.
- Subject
- History
In more detail
The essential enabling technology was English coal-fired glass, which produced bottles strong enough to hold the pressure, together with the cork. Writers of the period describe adding sugar or unfermented must at bottling and warn about bursting bottles, which is a recognisable description of bottle conditioning.
The claim sometimes made that this proves the English "invented sparkling wine" goes beyond the evidence; what the record supports is that deliberate in-bottle refermentation was practised in English cider in that period.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Fermentation
Bottle conditioning
Carbonating cider by fermentation inside the sealed bottle, either from primed sugar or from sugar left over from an incomplete ferment. The yeast deposit remains unless the bottle is disgorged.
Cider
Cidre bouché
French cider sold in a heavy bottle closed with a mushroom cork and wire cage, sparkling from fermentation continuing in the bottle. Literally "corked cider".
History
Royal Society cider committee
The group convened within the early Royal Society in the 1660s to gather and publish information on cider-making. *Pomona* is that enterprise’s output rather than one man’s book: it was annexed to Evelyn’s *Sylva* by express order of the Society, and its recorded contributors include John Beale, Daniel Colwall, Paul Neile, John Newburgh and Sylas Taylor alongside Evelyn.
History
Cider royal
A historic strengthened cider, made by adding spirit, honey or sugar, or by concentrating the juice — a category recorded in seventeenth-century English writing on cider.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Vinetum Britannicum, or a Treatise of Cider
John Worlidge · historical source · passage verified 2026-08-24 · covers 1676
Identified on 2026-08-24 from the 1678 edition held by the Internet Archive. John Worlidge, active 1669–1698; the work ran to further editions including 1691, so a citation to it should say which. The full title is broader than the short one CiderHQ uses and matters for what the book can be cited for: it covers other fruit wines and drinks alongside cider, so it is evidence about seventeenth-century English fruit fermentation generally rather than about cider alone.
Pomona, or an Appendix concerning Fruit-Trees in relation to Cider
John Evelyn, Royal Society · historical source · passage verified 2026-08-24 · covers 1664
Identified on 2026-08-24 from the 1670 edition held by the Internet Archive. The attribution needs correcting and CiderHQ has corrected it: *Pomona* is not a book by John Evelyn. It is an appendix annexed to Evelyn’s *Sylva*, published by express order of the Royal Society, and the contributors recorded for the volume are John Evelyn, John Beale, Daniel Colwall, Paul Neile, John Newburgh and Sylas Taylor. Beale has his own entry in this register, and the overlap is not a coincidence — the two texts come out of the same Royal Society enquiry into cider in the 1660s. Citing *Pomona* as Evelyn’s flattens a collaborative compilation into a single-author work.