Cider apple
Clara
A pale Asturian semi-sharp of moderate acid and mild character, permitted within the designation and planted as a blending component.
Also written Clara de Asturias.
- Classification
- Semi-acid — Asturian technological blocks
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Bulk juice
- Origin
- Asturias
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
Asturian technological blocks
Semi-acid · Semiácido
Intermediate acidity with low phenolics. Together with the acid block this is where most admitted fruit sits.
The Consejo Regulador publishes a technological block only for varieties DOP Sidra de Asturias admits, and this fruit is not among them. The block here is CiderHQ reading descriptive sources against the Asturian definitions rather than a published characterisation, and is the weaker statement of the two.
Every classification on CiderHQ names its system. Why there is more than one.
What it contributes to a blend
A direction, not a measurement. These bands are the level of resolution the evidence supports, and they say which way adding this fruit pushes a blend rather than what the finished cider will be.
| Axis | Typical | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Acid | Moderate | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | None | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Asturian semi-sharp classification under the SERIDA scheme.
Mild and pale, with moderate acid and no assertive character in any direction.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Clara, and for a great deal of cider fruit that is a finding rather than a gap. Bittersweet apples in particular contribute tannin, sugar and body while being close to aromatically mute, and most of what a cider made from them smells of was produced by the fermentation rather than carried in by the fruit. CiderHQ publishes the absence rather than filling the space with descriptors nothing supports.
Measured analysis
CiderHQ holds no sourced juice analysis for Clara. Figures for this cultivar circulate, but they reach the present through compilation rather than through the original tables, and publishing a number we cannot attribute would give it an authority it has not earned. What is known about how the fruit behaves is described above and below.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Moderate acid
- Very pale must
- Low phenolics
How it is used
- Blending fruit in sidra natural
- On the permitted-variety list of the Asturian protected designation
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Not part of the tradition and not obviously suited to it.
About Clara
Clara is a mild, pale semi-sharp that fills out an Asturian blend without altering its direction. Its name means light or pale, and like the other colour names in the Asturian repertoire it is descriptive enough to be locally useful and vague enough to be regionally unreliable.
The semi-sharp class into which it falls is the largest group among permitted Asturian varieties, and it is worth understanding what that says about the tradition. A cider region whose fruit clusters in the middle of the acid range, with very little at the phenolic end, is going to build character somewhere other than the blend — and Asturian practice builds it in the cellar, through wild fermentation, malolactic conversion, extended lees contact and a deliberate tolerance of oxidation.
There is no verified analysis for this cultivar and no distinctive sensory account. What is here is the class, the season and the designation status, which is the extent of what can be said honestly.
Related cultivars
Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.
Fruit that plays a similar part
Cultivars sharing a classification under the same system and a comparable role in a blend. Not a similarity score — a stated relationship.
De la Riega
A well-regarded Asturian cultivar in the semi-acid block at 4,3 g/L, low in disease and reliable in crop — balanced rather than sweet, despite a mild eating character.
Perico
A vigorous, very late-flowering Asturian cultivar in the semi-acid block at 3,9 g/L, planted on the permitted list for balance rather than for correction.
Solarina
A very vigorous, heavy-cropping Asturian cultivar in the semi-acid block, ripening in late October and carrying a little more phenolic weight than the regional floor.
José Antonio
A Galician cultivar carrying a personal name, used in the region’s cider and characteristic of how Galician fruit was identified and propagated.
Collaos
A late, moderately-cropping Asturian semi-acid cultivar, ripening at the very end of November — later than almost anything else on the permitted list.
Errezil
A celebrated Basque russet reinette from the village of Errezil, primarily an eating and cooking apple with a protected reputation, and used in cider where the crop allows.
Where it grows
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- How does cider ferment — Yeast consumes the sugar in apple juice and produces roughly equal masses of ethanol and carbon dioxide, along with the esters and higher alcohols that give cider much of its aroma. In a wild ferment several yeast species take turns before *Saccharomyces* finishes the job.
- How do you blend cider
- What is sidra natural — Sidra natural is the still, dry, unfiltered cider of Asturias and the Basque Country, bottled without added carbonation and poured from a height to rouse it. It is tart, funky and made to be drunk in small measures poured one at a time.
- What is asturian cider
- What is blanquina
Where to go next
- How cider apples are classified — Why there are four schemes and none of them is universal.
- The blend explorer — See which way changing the proportions moves a blend.
- Blending — What a cider maker is actually deciding when they build a blend.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Servicio Regional de Investigación y Desarrollo Agroalimentario (SERIDA)
Principado de Asturias · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The Asturian regional agri-food research service, and the technical authority behind the Asturian cultivar classification and the analysis of sidra natural. SERIDA’s own site has not been opened; what CiderHQ has read is SERIDA’s varietal characterisation as republished by the Consejo Regulador of DOP Sidra de Asturias, which credits it explicitly. The Asturian measurements therefore cite the Consejo rather than SERIDA — citing the body that did the work, at a document CiderHQ has not seen, would be exactly the kind of borrowed authority this register exists to prevent.
Denominación de Origen Protegida Sidra de Asturias
Consejo Regulador de la DOP Sidra de Asturias · designation authority · passage verified 2026-08-24
The regulating council for Asturian cider. Read on 2026-08-24, and it turned out to carry far more than a permitted-variety list: an agronomic and technological characterisation of each admitted variety, with total acidity, total polyphenols, vigour, flowering, ripening, cropping and susceptibility to fungal disease. The characterisation is credited to SERIDA’s fruit-research programme. Two things it settles are corrections to what CiderHQ previously held: Asturias sorts cider fruit into nine technological blocks rather than five, and it publishes acidity as sulphuric acid rather than malic. The figures are transcribed into `data/trials/serida-asturias.ts` and cite this source, because this is where they were read.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.