Hard cider sooner or later declined with industrialization almost everywhere. In many countries, it was much later than in the US. For instance, fermented cider consumption dropped by 73% between 1950 and 1975 in Switzerland, while overall alcohol consumption was rising by 30% (p. 71 in E Single, P Morgan and J de Lint, eds., Alcohol, Society, and the State: 2. The Social History of Control Policy in Seven Countries, Toronto: Addiction Research Foundation, 1981.) I think in France, too, cider almost disappeared as a commercial product in the postwar era. I remember an official of the Societe des Alcools (provincial monopoly stores) in Quebec telling me they only carried cider as a sop to the farming vote -- noone bought it anymore. Even in Britain, I think cider's role is diminished from what it was even in the 1930s. Changing tastes in alcoholic beverages are a fascinating and underresearched topic. Jessica Warner ([log in to unmask]) has recently written about British xenophobia and the succession of beverages derogated by Britons as "foreign". Pekka Sulkunen has applied an analysis in the Bourdieu tradition to the succession of beverages in France -- see a couple of articles in english in the British Journal of addiction, and his "a la recherche de la modernite: boissons et buveurs en France aujourd'hui: interpretation par un etranger. Helsinki: Social Research Institute for Alcohol Studies, Report No. 178, 1988. Temperance may indeed have been an instrument in the decline of cider in the US, but the story also has other dimensions. ([log in to unmask])