Cider apple
Court de Wick
A north Somerset dessert apple of nineteenth-century reputation, sharp enough to be pressed and used on farms as a dual-purpose fruit.
Also written Court of Wick, Court de Wyck, Courtaway.
- Classification
- Sharp — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Aroma
- Origin
- Court de Wyck, near Yatton, north Somerset
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
Long Ashton classification
Sharp
High acid, low tannin. Includes both purpose-grown sharps and many culinary apples.
Basis: Above about 0.45% w/v acid and below about 0.2% w/v tannin.
A sharp when pressed for cider, in line with dessert and dual-purpose fruit generally. It was not bred or selected as a cider apple.
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 | High | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Pronounced | |
| Body | Light |
Description of a sharp, aromatic dual-purpose apple. No cider analysis attaches to this cultivar.
Adds acid and a pronounced aromatic character drawn from its dessert quality.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Court de Wick, 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 Court de Wick. 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
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Good
October.
A dessert apple bred to keep, and it does.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Moderate to high acid
- Low tannin
- Aromatic
How it is used
- A north Somerset dessert apple of local reputation
- Pressed on farms as part of a mixed cider blend
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
A dessert apple. Fermented alone it gives something thin and quickly tiring, as most dessert fruit does.
About Court de Wick
Court de Wick was a north Somerset dessert apple of genuine nineteenth-century reputation, grown for eating and keeping and pressed on farms because everything got pressed on farms. Including it here is a reminder that the line between cider fruit and table fruit is a twentieth-century construction: an eighteenth-century Somerset orchard contained both, and the mill took whatever was surplus.
As a cider component it behaves like any good dessert sharp — acid, aroma, no tannin — and it works in the same way Cox does in a modern blend. It was never selected for cider and does not pretend to be a cider apple.
The name has drifted a long way. Court de Wyck, Court of Wick and the contracted Courtaway all appear in nineteenth-century records for what is understood to be the same fruit, and a reported synonym of Fry’s Pippin is not established.
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
Associated with the Court de Wyck estate in north Somerset and in cultivation by the later eighteenth century. The estate connection is consistent across sources; the raising is not documented.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Court of Wick | Historic spelling | A common variant; the name derives from Court de Wyck manor near Yatton in north Somerset. |
| Fry’s Pippin | Disputed identity | Given as a synonym in some nineteenth-century listings; not securely established. |
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.
Browns Apple
The standard Devon sharp: a bright red, heavy-cropping, high-acid apple with almost no tannin, and the fruit most English blends reach for when they need lift.
Golden Russet
The highest-gravity fruit in widespread North American cider use — a small bronze russet from New York whose juice regularly presses above 1.060 and which many revival makers treat as their benchmark cultivar.
Kingston Black
The most celebrated English single-varietal cider apple: a small dark-red bittersharp carrying acid and tannin in one fruit, and a tree difficult enough that its reputation has always outrun its plantings.
McIntosh
The defining apple of eastern Canada and northern New England — an Ontario seedling of about 1811 whose perfumed, high-acid juice is the aromatic foundation of most Quebec and northeastern cider.
Wickson Crab
A Californian dessert crab raised by Albert Etter, exceptional for carrying very high sugar and very high acid at the same time, and now one of the most sought-after cider cultivars in North America.
Braeburn
A New Zealand chance seedling found near Motueka in the 1950s, sharper and denser than most modern dessert apples, and one of the better commercial cultivars available to a cider blender.
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
- Can you make cider from cox apples — Yes, as an aromatic sharp in a blend. Cox carries about 0.60 per cent acid and only 0.07 per cent tannin on the Long Ashton figures, so it brings acid and aroma and no structure at all.
- What is juice blending
- What is a traditional west country cider blend — Predominantly bittersweet fruit for body and tannin, with a proportion of sharp fruit for acidity and sometimes a smaller share of bittersharps for both. The exact composition varied by farm and by what was in the orchard.
- What is somerset cider
- Why is cider made in the west country — Because the climate suits apples and disappoints wheat and barley: mild, wet winters, heavy soils and a long growing season. Where grain was hard to grow, orchards took its place and cider took beer’s.
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.
A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset
Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001. ISBN 9781874336877 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001, ISBN 9781874336877. The author was Long Ashton’s cider pomologist, which is why this work is registered for Somerset cultivar identity at all — it is the nearest thing to a successor to the station’s own descriptions. No copy was opened. Not digitised in any open collection.
University of Reading / Defra, Brogdale · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The UK national reference collection for apple and pear cultivars. The authority CiderHQ uses for whether two names are the same fruit, which is the central duplicate-resolution problem in cider data.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.