Cold Cider and the First Real Day of It

There’s a specific afternoon each spring that feels like permission—the first one warm enough to sit outside without negotiating with your jacket, where the light has gone from pale and exhausted to something that actually lands on your skin. You want something cold that isn’t beer, isn’t wine, doesn’t require a glass with a stem. Apple cider is the honest answer.

Not the cloudy, tannic stuff from a farm stand, though I like that too—I mean the lighter kind, fizzy and clean, more like very good sparkling apple juice that happens to have alcohol in it. It’s a drink that doesn’t take itself seriously, which is exactly right for a Tuesday afternoon in the park when you’ve stopped pretending the work can’t wait. Somersby had been quietly colonizing Scandinavian summers since 2008 before it spread across Europe, which tracks—Scandinavians understand the religion of chasing brief warmth with the appropriate beverage.

The pleasure is mostly situational. The same drink in February under fluorescent light tastes like nothing. On a balcony in late March with the city noise coming up from below, it tastes like the year finally agreeing to cooperate.