Is Applejack The Same As Apple Brandy?

Apple brandy, liquor made from fermented and distilled apples, is the perfect spirit for your tasty fall cocktail or as a digestif paired with a slice of pie. The term is often used interchangeably with applejack, but they're not necessarily the same drink. The former is the hypernym, while the latter is a specific type. In other words, applejack is a type of apple brandy, but not all apple brandy is applejack. 

There are multiple varieties of this brandy, some of the most common including: applejack (which originated in the United States), calvados (made exclusively in Normandy, France ), bätzi (made with dried apples in Switzerland), eau-de-vie de pomme (a clear spirit produced in multiple regions), and obstler (hailing from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). While all are made with apples, the taste of the brandy changes based on factors such as where the fruits are grown, whether sweet or tart varieties are used, if the drink was aged and for how long, and the type of wood barrels used to age it. 

Applejack is also called American apple brandy since it originated in the colonies in the late 17th century. Some people believe the name "applejack" is derived from the way the liquor was originally made — with a freezing process called jacking. The cider was frozen to separate the water, then the ice was scraped off to produce a less watery, more boozy spirit with a significantly higher alcohol content than its hard cider counterpart.

Scottish immigrant and New Jersey settler William Laird is often given credit for being the first to distill applejack in 1698. Today, Laird & Company, the New Jersey distiller founded by Laird's descendants, continues to produce most applejack and American apple brandy. However, they are not the sole producers of the spirit — Coppercraft Distillery, Hudson Valley,  and Jelinek are a few others that make the drink. 

"Applejack is so intertwined in the history of our state," Lisa Laird, chief operating officer of Laird & Company, told Wine Enthusiast. "If you were a farmer and you had apple trees on your property, you were producing cider spirits or applejack." Indeed, it was even a beloved drink of George Washington, according to a letter he wrote to the Laird family requesting their applejack recipe. 

The rise of innovative cocktails (try our Cognac recommendations) in the early 1900s led to a popular drink featuring applejack called the Jack Rose. This rosy red cocktail is made with applejack, lemon juice, and grenadine and is commonly garnished with raspberries, apple slices, or lemon slices. A popular concoction that lasted through Prohibition and after, the Jack Rose was listed as one of six fundamental drinks in David A. Embury's "The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks," a foundational book for bartenders first published in 1948.