Cider apple
Clos Renaux
A Norman bittersweet named after the enclosure it was found in, of moderate tannin and local rather than national importance.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — French cider apple families
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Bittersweet base, Late season
- Origin
- Normandy
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 4
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
French cider apple families
Bittersweet · Douce-amère
Low acid with substantial tannin.
Basis: Tannin 2 to 3 g/L and acidity below 3 g/L as H₂SO₄.
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 | Low | |
| Tannin | Moderate | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Moderate | |
| Astringency | Noticeable | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Family placement in French practice, with no verified analysis and a thin descriptive record.
A middling bittersweet: mild bitterness, low acid, no strong signature in any direction.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Clos Renaux, 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 Clos Renaux. 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
- Late
- Flowering
- Pollination group 4
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
Juice and pressing
- Moderate tannin
- Low acid
How it is used
- Blending fruit in Norman farm cider
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
No tradition of it, and nothing in the description suggests one is missing.
About Clos Renaux
Clos Renaux is a local Norman bittersweet whose name records a place on a farm rather than a person or a quality. This naming habit — the apple of the walled orchard, the apple of the Renaux enclosure — is characteristic of fruit that was propagated by grafting within a parish long before it appeared in any catalogue.
Its juice is a standard douce-amère: low acid, moderate tannin, unexceptional. It has no documented analytical record and no distinct sensory reputation, and the record here is deliberately short rather than padded.
Cultivars at this level of the record are worth keeping because the alternative is a false picture of the tradition. Norman cider was not made from thirty famous apples; it was made from what was in the orchard, and a substantial part of what was in the orchard has a name, a family label, and nothing else.
Names, origin and identity
Cultivar naming is the hardest problem in cider fruit data. The same tree carries different names across ten miles, and two different trees have shared a name for two centuries.
Origin · traditional account
A clos is a walled or hedged orchard enclosure, and a cultivar named for one is being identified by the field it grew in. That is a strong indication of a chance local seedling and no indication at all of a date.
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.
Bedan
A mild Norman bittersweet, planted more widely across the Domfrontais and the Pays d’Auge than almost any other traditional cultivar, and valued as much for how its juice keeves as for how it tastes.
Nehou
A Norman bittersweet long grown in English orchards, giving high tannin from a small, late, hard fruit and cropping better than most of its class.
Rouget de Dol
A red-skinned bittersweet from the Dol country of eastern Brittany, sitting between the Breton and Norman traditions in both geography and character.
Saint Martin
A very late Norman bittersweet named for the feast of Saint Martin on 11 November, which is roughly when it is expected to be ready.
Tardive Forestier
A late Norman bittersweet named for its season and for the family that grew it, planted where a mill needed fruit after the main crop was through.
Douce Moën
The workhorse of Breton cider orchards: a large, pale, very low-acid bittersweet that crops heavily, presses generously, and carries more Breton cider than any other single cultivar.
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 do you blend cider
- What is the difference between french cidre and english cider — French cidre is usually sweeter, weaker and more carbonated, because fermentation is arrested while sugar remains. English cider is more often fermented dry and finished still or lightly sparkling, and is stronger for it.
- What is normandy cider
- What does cidre fermier mean
- What is the pays d auge — The Pays d’Auge is the heartland of Norman cider, a country of clay soils and standard orchards east of Caen. Its cider and its calvados both carry appellations of their own.
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.
Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)
IFPC · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The French technical institute for cider production. The authority for the French cultivar classification families, for keeving as an industrial process, and for the pectin and nitrogen chemistry that keeving depends on.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.