Sterilization is arguably the most important thing there is when it comes to fermenting things to drink. The most common chemicals used have been Camden tablets, sodium or potassium metabisulfite, or boiling
water. You want yeast to be the only living thing in the solution when it starts out. One thing that sets apples apart from most other wine sources is their high content of malic acid. This allows a second "malolactic" fermentation to take place as the cider ages, which gives it it's distinctive taste and an extra pearl. But this fermentation is bacterial, not from yeast. You can risk letting wild strains do their thing, just as you can with wild yeasts, but it is safer to innoculate it with known cultures. Another interesting fact is that
apple cider does not suffer from the deleterious effects of temperature swings that most wines do.
And he said, "I want to live as an honest man, to get all I deserve, and to give all I can, and to love a young woman whom I don't understand. Your Highness, your ways are very strange."
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