Autumn's a great time to fall for apple appeal, with cooler temperatures setting the stage for the fruit to star in gently steaming pies and alongside fragrant roasts.

In this image taken on August 27, 2012, from left, glasses of hard apple cider, apple beer, and apple wine, along with, from left, bottles of beer, wine, and hard cider are shown in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Matthew Mead)

Or, you could drink your apple a day, the fermented way.

Hard cider, which came to the United States with the pilgrims but was lost in a sea of sweet, unfermented juice after Prohibition, has been making a comeback with increased sales and launches of new styles and flavors that have brought a bushel of options to store shelves.

"It's the most exciting beverage category in the market," says Jeffrey House, founder of the California Cider Co., the Sebastopol, Calif., based company that produces ACE Premium Hard Ciders, a major player among domestic producers.

Hard cider still is a small part of the overall alcoholic beverage market; sales don't come close to the multibillion-dollar beer industry. But it is a rapidly growing niche.

According to data from Chicago-based market research firm SymphonyIRI Group, hard cider sales at supermarkets and other stores (data exclude Walmart, club stores and liquor stores) totaled about $71.5 million for the 52 weeks ending Aug. 5, more than a 50 percent increase over the same period a year before.

More sales means more products. Anheuser-Busch has a cider out, Michelob Ultra Light Cider. And Boston Beer Co., makers of Samuel Adams, this spring introduced three varieties of Angry Orchard cider —Crisp, which is a little sweeter, Apple Ginger, and Traditional Dry, a mellow, slightly tangy drink in the style of an English draught cider.

To get the cider right, Angry Orchard cider maker David Sipes and his team traveled around the world studying cider making and sourcing apples, getting their fruit from Europe, including Northern Italy. "We found just some fantastic apple varieties really well-suited for cider production," he says. They also use traditional cider apples — bittersweet fruit that isn't very tasty raw — from Normandy and Brittany in France.

"A lot of the same things a winemaker would be looking for in their grapes we're looking for in cider apples. We're looking for certain balance of tannin and acidity and Brix (sugar levels) and the cider apples really lend a lot of those characteristics," he said. "The end result is just a cider of really uncommon complexity."

The attention to detail includes aging some of the ciders with wood; oak staves or chips are put into the tanks to add a subtle touch of the vanilla and baking spices that come with oak aging.

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