windfall apple cider/wine/schnapps or vinegar? Any suggestions or tips?

Years ago,  I worked in Switzerland for a farmer with fruit trees.   He threw his windfalls (apples pears and plums) in food grade plastic barrels,  left them tightly closed over the winter and then brought  the liquid from it up the mountains to a distiller who distilled it slowly (at low pressure and it boiled at a lower temperature) because of the height above sea level. (Perhaps 5000 ft or more over sea level) and then he put a tablespoon of  the schnapps in our morning coffees.  It was so good! He said " Brian,  you cannot get schnapps as good as this in a high end restaurant"  and I believed him because the flavour was magnificent.    So, anyways, this year I bought a food grade 50 gallon barrel for my windfalls and cores, etc.   And I have it just over half full and thrown in some wine yeast.    What do you recommend now?    Sugar and water and make slightly  alcoholic apple juice?  or just leave it a few months as is to ferment dry and see what happens?   A friend of mine makes cider vinegar and uses it to wash her clothes.   But I would actually prefer if I made at least some cider too.  Does anyone ferment their apples this lazy way,  with success?   So all I  did was pick the windfalls,  wash them a bit,  cut out the major bruises, etc, and then slice the windfalls up, then throw them into the barrel and added some wine yeast.  I can add water and sugar or just leave it dry to slowly ferment along.   What should I do?  
Brian

This sounds like a fun project that I will follow. Though I have not used your barrel method, I do make fruit wine, cider and vinegar. Fermenting fruit "the lazy way" sounds like the first stage of natural vinegar production. With a permeable aperture, the fruit ferments to alcohol then the airborne vinegar bacteria infects the brew. To keep your alcohol for yourself rather than the acetic acid bacteria, seal the top. For vinegar or wine, air on your fruit is the enemy (you don't want mold) so smash that fruit down and keep topping it off until all is submerged the fruit under juice. For cider, fill your container with just enough head space to bubble with minimal additional air exposure. You may have to juice some of your apples to get more liquid at first. Cool weather slows the yeast-eating process so less activity in your barrel may keep the top from blowing off. I'd use an airlock just in case.

Thinking about what might happen leads me to wonder about a few things. Since you're not boiling the fruit, natural yeast on your fruit will compete with your wine yeast. In making country wine, I would kill off the natural yeast before introducing a specialty yeast (I use champagne yeast). In your case, you will eventually distill the brew and you are not planning to drink much of the cider or wine: why buy a fine yeast if you will leave the natural yeast and you just want the alcohol? Regardless of what yeast wins out - natural or packaged - you will have some kind of hard cider if you seal the top and put an airlock on the small opening on your lid so that gas can exit but oxygen and acetic acid bacteria (alcohol eaters / vinegar producers) cannot enter. Here I consider that if more sugar will produce alcohol the flavorless sugar water will eventually kill the yeast faster and reduce the total consumption of fruit sugar. Why bother adding refined sugar when you have enough natural fructose in your full barrel to max out the yeast's tolerance for alcohol in the barrel environment (10-15%)? I'd use straight fruit juice instead of sugar-water and, if necessary for submerging, weigh down the fruit with a food-grade plastic mesh or flavorful DIY fruit-wood screen to keep it from floating in the barrel. Once the yeasts have died of alcohol poisoning and you have your elixir strained out, there is a distilling discussion on Permies https://permies.com/t/47000/kitchen/talk-distilling that you may find interesting.

I'm looking forward to following your progress, Brian!

I'd love to hear more about how this practice has worked out if you have more experience to share.