Sips from a cider spree

My boots were soaked, and the air reeked of overripe apples. I felt as if I were bathing in the cider I'd come to drink. It was early October and steamy; if the leaves that blazed red from nearly every tree branch were seasonal stop signs, the gods of summer hadn't seen them.

I was a few miles from Cayuga Lake, the second-largest of New York's 11 Finger Lakes, on a small but extraordinarily prolific orchard. The property's fruit, which ranged from the palest wash of yellow to grapefruit pink to a purple so dark it looked like a fresh bruise, was hanging all around me and rotting underfoot.

Our host, Ian Merwin, ripped a Hudson's Golden Gem from a nearby limb and, with a worn pocketknife, cut an imperfect wedge. It's a "really bizarre" apple, said the orchard owner, who wore a walrus mustache and a newsboy cap. He described sandpaper skin and a grainy flesh. "This apple, to me, tastes like vanilla ice cream," he said. The crowd oohed and aahed like circusgoers.