I wanted to love this book, as I love Chelsea Green (the publisher) books, I admire the author, and he's obviously a brilliant and dedicated man. I even love making apple cider, and make it from foraged apples the old fashioned way. I just couldn't get into it. It's a deep and winding read that just couldn't keep my attention. I highly recommend it for a certain niche, but I'm not sure who that niche is.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

I thought this book sounded interesting but it was a little difficult for me to go into. I wanted to hear about the apple orchards and making cider but it seemed kind of drawn out, at least in the beginning. I couldn't continue reading it since it didn't hold my interest so it might have picked up eventually. I think it is a really cool idea for a book and an interesting thing to write about, but I would have loved more personal stories to descriptions of what it is (although that is important and has it's place in the book as well).

I really enjoyed learning more about apples and cider production; reading the book made me excited to learn more about this natural way of producing cider and my husband and I even were moved to buy cider from Brennan's cidery because we were so interested in it. I found his thoughts about apple farming and food production in general to be engaging.

However, this read was a bit of a slog for me. While I think it would be very useful for those who want to start making their own cider and possibly turning it into a business, for the average vaguely-interested-in-this-concept person like me, I didn't really need to know all the different information about soils, root stocks, types of apples, etc. Again, I thought it was fascinating to learn about how he made his cider and what he does himself for his business, but the background information about building it as a business and the nitty-gritty agricultural aspect wasn't a huge draw for me. I do think it's incredibly comprehensive though, so if that's what you're looking for, this book has quite a lot of information within it.

This book is an enjoyable read, though, and it will definitely make you want to try some cider while you're reading it! Anyone interested in cider-making would find something to like from this book, even if they don't need to read the whole book to get what they'd like out of it.

Andy Brennan is absolutely fascinating when discussing the world of cider, apple farms, and his journey becoming involved in these areas.  Unfortunately, when pontificating upon almost anything else it gets a bit dicey.  Uncultivated started off as a wonderful read.  From the introduction alone I not only became excited to read the book but also wanted to (and eventually did) buy and try some of the cider Andy makes at the Aaron Burr Cidery.  The descriptions of what cider is, is not, and should be are nothing short of beautiful.

The book goes through several different sections.  I found the first couple sections about apples and cider to be fascinating and learned a lot about both subjects.  I enjoyed the descriptions of the different attributes one would look for in a cider apple versus an apple for eating and learning about the wild apples that grow in the area of New York where Andy forages and makes his cider was also incredibly interesting to me.  Furthermore, learning about the process of making cider and how it has changed over the years was equally interesting and made me want to try my hand at trying to make my own cider.  While perhaps a little longer than it needed to be, I overall enjoyed these first two sections.

The section on business is where I started to get a little lost.  On the positive side, I appreciated the differentiation between commercial cider and what Andy would consider true cider.  It made a lot of sense to me and I enjoyed learning about some of the distinctions.  At this point of the book however the snobbery that was hinted at throughout really came to the fore.  This would have been ok if it did not feel like he was repeating similar points over and over again and finding weird analogies that do not always work and occasionally took me out of what I was reading.

Overall, I found the book to be quite interesting.  It is worth a read if you are interested in cider, although, I wish the book were about a third shorter than it is since it became rather repetitive which led to to some of the more grating elements of Andy's style to become apparent and annoying.

Brennan writes eloquently about the industry that feeds his occupation - cider-making - and focuses intently on heirloom or lost strains of apple trees. Having grown up in the Apple Country of western NY, I know a little bit about apple trees and orchards. Brennan does an excellent job of sharing information about the cultivation of apple trees, and what it means to entrepreneurs like himself. I am so happy to see attention being paid to those lost varieties of apples, and make an effort to support farms that are attempting to bring them back. Before I read this, I didn’t know much about cider-making and how the variety of apple has such an effect on the end product. Fascinating stuff. Recommended for apple enthusiasts and anyone interested in the cider industry.

The owners of the local cider works are some of the business owners in town who actually recognize me, greet me by name, and take time to catch up with me when I visit. That’s more due to how often that I visit than anything else. So I was super excited to read this book so that I could talk with the cider works’ owners about it at my next visit.

This is a very challenging review to write because this was a very challenging book to read. It took me just under two months to read because I was reluctant to pick it back up after stopping for the evening. I was more trepidatious than enthusiastic about where the narrative would take me next, because the author tended to use cider making as a springboard to dive headfirst into difficult socioeconomic issues. Had this book not been a NetGalley ARC, I probably would have abandoned it after the first one hundred pages.

The narrative style reminded me vaguely of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, in that the narrative frequently branched off from its central topic (cider making) into treatment of a social issue, or a memory, or a history lesson, or whatever else the author thought was important at that moment. So much so that it seemed like the minority of the book was actually about cider making, and the majority of the book was about the author’s opinions on various social issues. However, like all the branches of a wild apple tree are organically connected to the trunk, these seemingly random tangents were all ultimately connected back to the core premise of cider making. And the tangents seemed to sprout organically from the main discussion of cider making - or from the nearest tangent - that the book read very quickly once I got beyond my expectations and into the flow of the narrative. But getting into that flow was such a challenge for me, especially since early on in the book the author’s tangents seem to dwell in the realm of socioeconomic critique. The softer more entertaining anecdotes about life on the farm and about being a cider maker came much later on in the book.

In talking with owners of the local cider works about the book after I finished it, they affirmed that how I described the book to them was authentically the author’s voice. I’ve got to give the author credit for putting this book out there and resisting any editorial input that would have softened his candid critiques in order to broaden the appeal of the book.

I do believe that there may be an audience for this book who would consider it to be a refreshing work of genius. I’m just not that audience.

I received this book as a digital advance reader copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Andy Brennan becomes a maniac before your eyes. In Uncultivated, he morphs from introverted struggling artist to manic spokesman for marginal, but historically fulfilling and naturally satisfying apple ciders. Not the canned ones, not the ones made from industrial apples and processes. He likens those to apple spritzers. No, what’s writing about is naturally fermented ciders made from wild apples in upstate New York.

The book is all over the place. It constantly switches from the issues and heroes of cidering, to personal milestones in his life, to historical facts about his local area, to personal issues and development as a farmer and neighbor, to the mechanics of making a living, and to the state of the world of agriculture. And all of it goes to support his increasingly strident view of working within nature and not for the most potential dollars. “With each passing year I seem to be getting more and more insane with my stubbornness,” he freely admits late in the book.

It’s a real rollercoaster of a tale. In the middle of the book, in the midst of otherwise sane discourse, Brennan suddenly erupts, or perhaps blooms, with a rant on cider:

“It’s the tannins! You might try to spit it out but it’s too late. The apple has already released a chalky, woody quality that acts like the little people of Gulliver’s Travels tying down a tingling sensation to the front end of your mouth like a 9-volt battery. Shit, this actually hurts! you unexpectedly say to yourself. You’re used to juicy apples exploding in your mouth before swiftly falling off the back waterslide, but this apple is setting up shop like a sadistic dentist and you’re alarmed at what the Novocain precludes. Maybe the bitterness means the apple is poisonous. Maybe Denniston Red [Brennan’s favorite tree] was the model for Snow White’s witchy queen after all. Maybe this is why the fruit is forbidden? Doomed, you just tasted a cider apple.” 148

His cider is rated top notch. It is used by highly-rated Manhattan eateries. He spent a lot of time as a media star, hyping the value of apple cider, how it is made, its place in US history, and what to look for in a cider. He only makes 1500 gallons a year, because that’s all he and his wife Polly can handle without driving themselves to drink. He forages for wild apples, and neighbors dump bags and barrels of them in his driveway, because they are no good to eat.

Brennan divides the apple world into two. The vast majority are industrially raised, exact clones of thin skinned, large, juicy fruit for commercial production. Wild apples are small, thick skinned, mottled, rusted, dirty, dry and chewy. He says they are meant for animals, not humans. Animals take them and spread the five or ten seeds in each one. That is the purpose of an apple. Apples for humans are artificial constructs. But the wild ones make apparently unbelievable ciders.

Ciders have a wide range of flavors and tastes, subtleties and character. Like the trees they come from, each one is an individual personality. Brennan attributes anthropomorphic characterizations to wild apple trees according to their fruit, their location, their shape, size and habits. He gives them names. Apple trees have DNA three times as dense as human DNA, and so every offspring is different from its parent, like human children. Planting the seed of an apple you like will almost certainly not give you a tree with more of the same fruit. Only cutting and grafting branches onto other rootstock will do that. And that is the essence of the modern orchard, which Brennan detests.

There is a lot of repetition in Uncultivated, as Brennan seeks to hammer certain points home. He mentions far too many times how introverted he is, so he refuses to have a store or tastings at his farm. Yet he gives lectures, addresses crowds, appears in all manner of media and deals with total strangers at farmers markets within about 90 minutes of his home. His writing is bold, brassy and assertive, very unlike introverts. Methinks he doth protest too much.

There is lots to love about the book. It even has a climax of sorts, when he tries to take delivery of a shipment of bottles for the current crop. It is a wonderfully unexpected story of struggle that I won’t spoil for you. All this to say by the end of Uncultivated, readers know more about Andy Brennan than his old neighbors ever did in Brooklyn where he largely failed to become a recognized artist, and probably more than most of his neighbors in Wurtsboro in the Catskills know about him today.

The writing is firm, informative and entertaining. Brennan gives lots of credit to others: experts, farmers, neighbors, and all kinds of help. Both requested and serendipitous. It is a rocky (literally) trip to a state of contentment and mastery of an age-old, remarkably simple process he has chosen for his life. Brennan has backfilled with both local and apple history, which overlap continuously. It is fine entertainment with a serious message.

David Wineberg

Everything about this book is unique! From the very eye catching title and cover plus the unusual jacket cover to the entertaining, educating story itself. I think anyone would enjoy the book, not just us cider lovers. Any business is difficult to start and keep running. If you had to add in mother nature's whimsy you multiply the difficulty. Andy Brennan has done a great job of chronicling his journey and finding along the way that this is what he was meant to do all along. The book fits into so many different categories that it is really a stand alone category itself. For inspirational self help, memoir, biography, outdoor life, etc. you'll love this book.