Sparkling Apple Juice, an Alcohol-Free Champagne Cider

Clear juice, cold glasses

Choose a clear, filtered apple juice rather than a cloudy pressed one. Terrington starts from “good clear old cider,” and even the doctored bottle a US government chemist opened in 1887 was bright and clear. The trade sold that brightness. The chemist described much of the bottled champagne cider of his day as clarified cider, a large share of it made in New Jersey, and thought most of the cheap American champagne was made the same way. A filtered juice from the shop shelf gives the glass the same clear look. The same chemist found that sweet cider fresh from the press averaged 1.76 percent alcohol, and the two champagne ciders he tested three to four times that. Use pasteurized juice: the US Food and Drug Administration warns that untreated juice and fresh-pressed cider can carry harmful bacteria.

The soda water softens the juice’s sweetness as well as lifting it. For a hot alternative on a cold evening there is the mulled sweet cider with nutmeg and cloves, and the alcoholic glass of Terrington’s day is the Cider Cup à la Ensor.