In New York’s Hudson Valley, the Ancient Wassail Tradition Is Alive and Well

Photograph by Landon Speers

“WASSAIL!” Hundreds of revelers roar at once, thrusting homemade torches into the freezing air and banging pans together with cacophonous glee. It’s stadium-loud, a din to wake the dead.

January in New York’s Hudson Valley is typically a quiet time. Summer’s giddy rollicking is a distant memory. The fall foliage that sets the hills ablaze come October has long scattered, rustling leaves underfoot giving way to the hush of snow. With the holidays in the rearview mirror, most who call the region home gratefully give in to the slowness of the season. Everything in the valley becomes muted; hibernation is the order of the day.

But on one particular afternoon each year, folks break from their slow puttering to gather in the orchards of 200-year-old Rose Hill Farm with a very specific mission: to make a lot of noise.

Since 2022, cider sommelier Dan Pucci and Madeleine Osborn have hosted their idiosyncratic take on an English wassail celebration, the ancient tradition of visiting apple orchards in the wintertime to fête the trees and promote a prosperous harvest in the year to come. The singing, chanting, and DIY percussion serves to not only symbolically rouse the trees from their slumber but to scare off bugs, blight, and whatever bad spirits might endanger them. But more than anything, it’s an opportunity for the community to come together and feel a sense of connection with the land and its bounty. “It’s a way to get people out of their little holes this time of year,” Pucci jokes.

Would-be wassailers of all ages arrive at the farm’s timber frame taproom early in the afternoon to fashion elaborate crowns from foraged plants and wrap torches. The fruits of previous years’ harvests flow freely, whether in the form of sweet sparkling apple juice or any number of hard ciders, wines, and coferments crafted by Rose Hill’s head winemaker Matt Sanford.

When the setting sun starts its slow dive toward the Catskill Mountains to the west, the several-hundred strong crowd begins its exuberant procession up a hill to a pair of gnarled Spartan apple trees, two of the oldest in the orchard. There, the names of the over 50 varieties of apples, plums, peaches, and other fruits cultivated on the property are read aloud, each one followed by a thunderous “wassail” from those assembled. Mutsu. WASSAIL! Jonagold. WASSAIL! Transcendent Crab. WASSAIL! (It is worth noting that in the first year organizers named the farm’s apples but neglected the other fruits; coincidence or not, that year saw a disastrous stone fruit harvest.)

Pucci and Sanford dramatically saber a bottle of cider with a machete, anoint the trees, and everyone tumbles down the hill where a bonfire made from discarded Christmas trees throws sparks high into the darkening sky.

“There’s no other time in the year where it feels this way on the farm,” Sanford reflects. “Everyone is having this big shared experience, appreciating the earth and the community, in a place where they get their sustenance throughout the year.”

The party continues for just a few more hours—8 p.m. feels pretty late when the sun sets at 5—before the merrymakers disperse, making for homes warmed by crackling woodstoves and the cozy solitude of the season, prepared to wait until the trees’ first new buds signal winter’s end.

There’s never been a more exciting time to drink American cider.

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit