Glossary · History
The Redstreak era
Definition
The seventeenth-century period in which Herefordshire cider made from the Redstreak apple was promoted as a national drink capable of rivalling imported wine, and orchards were planted on that expectation.
- Subject
- History
In more detail
The promotion was led by Herefordshire improvers and taken up by the Royal Society circle. It was a genuine commercial and agricultural movement, and its collapse — through the decline of the cultivar, changing fashion and the return of wine imports — is the first of several cycles in which cider has been marketed as a premium product and then retreated to the farm.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
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
Pomona
A descriptive and usually illustrated book of fruit varieties. The word is from the Roman goddess of fruit trees, and the genre is the principal historic record of cider and perry cultivars.
History
Early bottling
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.
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.
Herefordshire Orchards, a Pattern for all England
John Beale · historical source · passage verified 2026-08-24 · covers 1657
Identified on 2026-08-24. John Beale’s account of Herefordshire orcharding was first printed in 1657; the copy located and confirmed is the 1724 reprinting held by the Internet Archive, and CiderHQ says which it has seen rather than implying it has read the first edition. The work is an epistolary address rather than a treatise, which is worth knowing before quoting it: it argues a case for Herefordshire practice to a correspondent, and reads as advocacy as much as description. Beale is also one of the contributors to *Pomona*.
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.
Hereford Museum of Cider collections and interpretation
Hereford Cider Museum Trust · museum · retrieved 2026-08-24