so I'm a beer brewer, but I do check the cider pages from time to time just to see what people are doing. Now there is one thing that is confusing me. What is the difference between fermented cider and apfelwine?
Cider is just fermented apple juice, either carbonated or still (5-7% abv). apfelwine has various other ingredients, mainly sugar to boost the abv into wine territory(10-13%abv), and requires more ageing to be drinkable. for more info see the recipe and threads on apfelwine.
Apfelwine uses a wine yeast, which brings it to a very dry state, the standard recipe is a little hight ABV, and really needs to age around 8 months to a year to be at it's best and it does taste like an apple wine.
Plain old hard core cider takes the apple juice and ferments that down to usually a mostly dry state. Taste like cider.
Other recipes use different yeast, and and sugar, honey, malts, etc to make different tasting stuff.
I like them all.