Baldwin, Roxbury Russet, and Winesap are usually considered to have good resistance to CAR, and Bramley and Ashmead's Kernel are fairly resistant. I wonder if it is a co-incidence that all are triploid varieties? Liberty is one of the best modern disease-resistant varieties that holds up well agains...

Malus Dolgo (sometimes known as Pink Glow) is sometimes available in the USA (and widely available in the UK). It is one of the earliest crabapples, so a good partner for early-blooming apples. Golden Hornet is worth trying to find if you have problems with late-blooming apples, because it is one of...

I agree with Womblesd, we visited Vintage Virginia Apples last fall and they certainly know a thing or two about cider. However as I recall they regarded themselves as being on the southern limit for many of the traditional English hard-cider varieties

The environment in a container is much tougher than you would find in open ground, but M26 is quite a good rootstock for container-growing. The container will naturally restrict the tree, so it will be smaller than it might otherwise be. I think 100liter capacity will be pretty good, and should keep...

There are several that might work:
Arkansas Black, Bramley's Seedling, Hewes Crab, Nittany, Wickson Crab.

The most reliable hot-climate varieties are Fuji, Granny Smith, Gala and GoldRush. Not cider varieties necessarily, but perhaps worth considering as part of your project.

It does not seem to be listed in the USDA Geneva malus catalog. Does it have any alternative names?

If you know of anyone selling black Myrobalan trees (Prunus cerasifera) please get in touch. Most myrobalans are yellow or red, but there are some black / purple forms.

Interesting website about the hard-cider apple varieties of northern Spain:

http://www.sidradeasturias.es/variedades.php

The size of the roots depends heavily on the type of rootstock you used. Semi-vigorous rootstocks will go down maybe 4ft or more over time, dwarf ones a bit less.

In KY you might find spring is a better time to plant. The trouble with planting in December is that if winter arrives suddenly the tree will not have had time to establish its roots, so you are taking an unnecessary risk. You could maybe use the rabbit droppings as a mulch. The mature height of an ...

Have you tried Siloam Orchards? They do trees as well as apples.

To answer your third question, grafting in situ is an excellent idea. You get a great headstart over conventional nursery trees because there is no transplant shock. However you won't get 100% success with your grafting / budding so there will inevitably be gaps, and if you want to use interstems th...

M116 is a relatively new English rootstock. As far as I am aware it is not available in the US, and is very hard to obtain in the UK.

I agree with dmtaylor. Try staking it ... but at the same time maybe take some graftwood to propagate from it (or simply buy a new Ellison's Orange tree and plant that nearby).

We visited several orchards in VA recently, and their crop seemed to be holding up fairly well and quality was good.