Like dinosaurs and VHS tapes, certain apple varieties have gone extinct.
Ben Watson found that hard to digest.
As the author of “Cider, Hard and Sweet: History, Traditions and Making Your Own” -- a book credited with helping to turn hard cider into a thriving slice of America’s craft-beverage movement -- he was an elder statesman in the apple world.
So in the early 2000s, when Mr. Watson learned that the granite beauty variety, a staple of his childhood in New Hampshire, was in danger of disappearing he commenced a rescue operation.
He found four surviving trees and took cuttings from them to graft new trees. He shared the young trees with friends and sent the cuttings to preservationists. Then he waited.
Years later, as fall rolled in, the payoff ripened on branches throughout New England.
“The white flesh is tender and juicy,” he wrote on his website. “There is an initial flavor note of warm spice (curry, cardamom), which fades quickly on the palate, becoming sweet and slightly tart, like fruit drops.”
Mr. Watson died on Aug. 15 at his home in Peterborough, N.H. He was 64. The cause was uveal melanoma, a cancer of the eye, his sister Deborah Watson said.
Known among friends as Brother Apple, Ben Watson played a pivotal role in elevating the apple as a worthy ingredient in alcoholic beverages -- one that was more than capable of competing with grapes and barley for the attention of discerning palates.
“Before Ben, people really weren’t talking about the apples,” said Ria Windcaller, a cider tour guide and host of the “Cider Chat” podcast. “He geeked out about them in a way that people probably associate with grapes and wine.”
Mr. Watson became intrigued by cider in the 1980s while writing for Yankee magazine. Traveling the back roads of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, he met orchard keepers and cider makers laboring in near obscurity.
One chilly February day, he took his first sip of real hard cider at a farmer’s house.
“Everything on the kitchen table that Sunday afternoon had been grown or made within a stone’s throw of where we were sitting,” Mr. Watson wrote in “Cider, Hard and Sweet.” “That cider was nothing short of a revelation to me and my poor unwitting taste buds; the full flavor of golden apples fairly burst in my mouth.”
In the early 1990s, he met Terry and Judith Maloney, founders of West County Cider in Western Massachusetts. Among the first small-batch cider makers in the country, the Maloneys started CiderDays, an annual festival that draws producers and aficionados from around the world.
On the periphery at first, Mr. Watson eventually grew more involved and organized the event’s Cider Salon, a tasting of ciders from near and far.
“He was like the glue that brought everyone together,” Maloney said in an interview.
Frustrated that cider wasn’t more popular, Mr. Watson wrote “Cider, Hard and Sweet” to teach Americans about the history of the beverage. Cider was regarded as preferable to water or milk among the country’s early settlers. President John Adams drank large quantities every day.
Cider was also currency.
“Especially in rural areas, cider became a common unit of exchange,” Mr. Watson wrote. “It was frequently used by farmers to pay the doctor, the schoolteacher, the minister and other local professionals for their services.”
The book included instructions on how to make hard cider -- a process that is comparatively easier and less time-consuming than making wine or beer.
“You don’t need a degree in chemistry or microbiology,” he wrote. “You don’t need to buy specialized brewing equipment like a wort chiller or a lauter tun; you don’t even need to sacrifice half of your garage to the operation.”
The main ingredients, he noted, “are nothing but good unpasteurized juice and a bit of patience.”
When the book was published in 1999, hard cider was little more than an afterthought in the craft-beverage market. But Mr. Watson foresaw a renaissance, a conviction that was confirmed when the book became so popular that a second edition was published in 2008.
Five years later, he produced a third edition. In the introduction to that volume, he noted that hard cider sales in grocery stores had increased 65 percent from 2011 to 2012, outpacing the growth of wine and craft beer.
“Cider, suddenly, is almost everywhere,” he wrote. “Many of the new cider drinkers are young, and about half of them are women. The future looks bright.”
Mr. Watson and his book, Maloney said, were important catalysts: “I think he did a lot to make cider a larger thing, not a local thing.”
Benjamin Alan Watson was born in Concord, N.H., on Dec. 3, 1961, to Howard Watson, a civil engineer for the state highway department, and Audrey (Evans) Watson.
He grew up near an orchard in Contoocook and picked apples with his three older sisters.
After school, he worked at a farm collecting bushels of McIntosh and Cortland apples that would be pressed into cider.
“I forget what we earned per bushel,” Mr. Watson told The New Hampshire Union Leader in 1999. “Suffice it to say that it was not enough to retire on.”
He studied English at Yale University and graduated in 1983.
After his time working for Yankee, Mr. Watson became an editor at Chelsea Green, a publisher known for books on sustainable living. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, he acquired books on organic farming, fermentation, permaculture, and natural building.
He also edited and contributed to books about the slow-food movement, including “The Slow Food Guide to New York City: Restaurants, Markets, Bars” (2003), which surveyed artisanal, sustainable cooking in the city.
“Ben was instrumental to our success because he always had his ear to the ground, networking and learning about these new movements,” said Margo Baldwin, a founder of Chelsea Green. “I think he helped change the culture in important ways.”
Mr. Watson did not marry. In addition to his sister Deborah, he leaves another sister, Cynthia Watson. His sisters Judith Anne Wood and Rebecca Watson predeceased him.
Many hard ciders have a citrusy taste. That disappointed some first-time drinkers.
“People say, ‘I don’t like this because it doesn’t taste like apples,’” Mr. Watson told The Burlington Free Press in 2014. “So I ask them if they expect wine to taste like grapes.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.