Apfelwein-Festival (Apple Wine Festival)

Apple wine is to Frankfurt what beer is to Munich. It is dry, tart, around the strength of a light beer and nothing like American hard cider, which tends to be sweeter. Every summer the Roßmarkt square downtown fills with cider makers presenting the drink in every variation they can pour, plus a stage program of dialect comedians, musicians and cabaret.

The drink has a paper trail. Apple wine first shows up in Frankfurt around 1600, and by 1638 the city council had issued an ordinance on how pure it had to be, rules that producers still follow. The first apple wine tavern opened in 1754, and the drink has been taxed at the tap ever since. For a long time it was cheap and unfashionable, drunk by people who could not afford grape wine. That changed in the 19th century, when a phylloxera plague wrecked Hesse's vineyards and apple wine stepped in as the everyday replacement.

It is also an unusually honest product. The apples are pressed, and the natural sugar drives the fermentation, which can take up to four months to finish completely. Gases escape through a fermentation tube, and once racked the wine keeps for years. Nothing is added to start or stop fermentation, and it is not sweetened afterward.

Learn the glassware and you will order like a local. A Gerippte is the standard apple wine glass, cut with a diamond pattern and holding 0.3 liters, roughly 10 ounces. There are smaller 0.25-liter glasses that locals call the Beschisserglas, the cheater's glass, because they cost the same as the larger one. The pattern is not decoration: it dates from a time when people ate with their hands, and the ridges kept greasy fingers from losing their grip. If you are thirsty, order a Bembel instead, the gray-and-blue stoneware jug that keeps the wine cool. Bembel come as a 4er or an 8er, meaning four or eight glasses, so one liter or 1.2 liters depending on the glass size.

Connoisseurs will tell you what to look for. A good apple wine tastes fruity, with only mild tannin and acidity. If it has a vinegary edge, a sulfur note or a heavy yeast flavor, put the glass down. Color helps too: quality apple wine runs from pale to golden yellow. If you find the straight version too sharp, ask for a Gespritzter, apple wine cut with sparkling water. Purists consider this heresy. It is also the reason you can still walk home.

At the festival itself, the cider makers set up their stands on the Roßmarkt and explain how the wine is made, with tastings across the range: classic Äbbelwoi, single-variety wines, seccos and sparkling versions. The Schaukelter, a rocking press, is the crowd favorite because you watch the production happen in front of you. The recurring highlight is the presentation of the Golden Apple, an honorary prize handed over by the mayor for work protecting Hesse's Streuobstwiesen, the traditional orchard meadows the apples come from.

The festival also elects a queen, which unusually is done by vote. Candidates must be at least 18 and are expected to bring genuine enthusiasm for apple wine. The winner takes on around 40 appearances a year, representing the city at pressing and wine festivals across the region.