Terms of admission

The parties

These terms are between you and Tidewater Culinary & Heritage Cider Society Inc., trading as Williamsburg Harvest Celebration, of 416 Prince George St, Williamsburg, VA 23185. By reading on, running the provisioner, or writing to the box office, you accept them. If you would rather not, close the page and we part friends.

The almanac is a notebook, not a guarantee

The treatises, companions and tables on this site are the Society's working knowledge, written by its steward from practice and from the historical record. They are offered in good faith and may be wrong, incomplete, or out of date. Salinity readings move with the weather, must readings move with the year, and every smokehouse ham is a law unto itself. Use the almanac as you would a knowledgeable friend's advice: gladly, and with your own judgement switched on.

The provisioner is arithmetic

The feast provisioner multiplies your guest count by the Society's own tallies for oysters, apples, ham and firewood. It does not know your guests, your weather or your appetite. Order from it as a starting point. The Society is not answerable for a roast that ran short, a cellar that overflowed, or a woodpile that was larger than it needed to be.

Food safety is yours at your own table

Raw and undercooked shellfish can carry illness, and unpasteurised cider can too. The almanac describes how the Society handles both at its own sittings, under a health permit, with harvest-tagged oysters and a cold chain. If you roast or press at home, the responsibility for doing it safely is yours. Nothing on this site is medical or food-safety advice for your particular circumstances.

Tickets and sittings

• A reservation is confirmed only when the box office has written to say so and payment has cleared.
• Tickets are for the sitting named. They may be passed to another person, and the box office will note the change if told.
• A ticket returned to the box office fourteen days or more before the sitting is refunded in full. Inside fourteen days it is refunded only if the seat is resold from the waiting list.
• The Society may cancel or move a sitting for weather, for the river, for a failure of supply, or for a public-health order. If it does, the ticket is refunded in full or exchanged, at your choice, and that is the extent of the Society's liability.
• The stewards may refuse admission or ask a guest to leave for conduct that spoils the sitting for others. No refund is owed in that case.

Cider and the law

Hard cider is served at the Society's sittings under a Virginia ABC banquet licence to guests who are twenty-one or older and can show it. Sweet cider is served to everyone. The Society does not sell cider for carrying away and does not ship it.

Whose words these are

The text, tables, drawings and the provisioner script on this site belong to the Society. You may quote from them for a review, a lesson, or a gathering of your own, with the Society named as the source. You may not republish whole pages, strip the Society's name from them, or sell them. The historical receipts quoted from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources are in the public domain and are yours as much as ours.

Links and purveyors

The Society names its purveyors because it is proud of them. Naming is not endorsement of anything they do beyond what they sell us. The Society does not answer for any other party's goods, premises or conduct.

Limits

To the extent Virginia law allows, the Society's liability to you for anything arising from this site or a sitting is limited to the price of the ticket you bought, and the Society is not liable for indirect or consequential loss. Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law does not allow to be limited.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Any dispute the stewards and you cannot settle by correspondence will be heard in the courts sitting in Williamsburg or James City County. The Society would much rather settle it over a plate of oysters, and will offer that first.

Changes

The stewards may revise these terms. The date at the head of the page marks the version in force. A ticket is governed by the terms in force on the day it was bought.