Cider apple
Cripps Pink
A Western Australian cross of Golden Delicious and Lady Williams released in the 1990s, very late and long-seasoned, notable for keeping usable acid alongside high sugar in a hot climate.
Also written Cripps Pink, Pink Lady.
- Classification
- Not classified under any recorded system
- Harvest
- Very late (November onwards)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Sugar and body, Acid lift, Late season
- Origin
- Stoneville Research Station, Western Australia
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
How it is classified
No classification scheme has been recorded for Cripps Pink. That is common outside Europe: the English, French and Spanish systems were each built for their own fruit, and a cultivar grown where none of them applies simply has no class. What the fruit contributes to a blend is described below regardless — the class is a shorthand for that, not a substitute.
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 | Negligible | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | None | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Description of a very late, high-sugar cultivar that retains more acid than other warm-climate dessert apples. CiderHQ holds no juice analysis for it from any site. These bands were authored from description; published analyses of this fruit have since been transcribed onto the record from named trial programmes and are shown above. The bands are not derived from those figures, which is why this profile is marked as classified rather than measured.
Sweet and dense with a persistent tartness behind it — the acid lasts on the palate longer than in most modern dessert fruit.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Cripps Pink, 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
Each figure is shown with where and when it was taken. They are not averaged: the same cultivar grown in another climate genuinely gives different numbers, and collapsing them into one would be the most misleading thing this page could do.
Brix13.0 °Bx
Winchester, Virginia, USA, 2012–2013 · Refractometer on pressed juice. · Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Refractometric sugar reading. Measured in degrees brix.
pH3.55 pH
Winchester, Virginia, USA, 2012–2013 · Meter on pressed juice. · Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Acid strength, which governs microbial risk and sulphite effectiveness. Measured in ph.
Titratable acidity9.3 g/L
Winchester, Virginia, USA, 2012–2013 · Titration, reported as malic acid. Published to two decimal places and shown at the one the site displays. · Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Acid measured by neutralisation — the quantity of acid, not its strength. Measured in grams per litre.
Total phenolics211.0 mg/L
Winchester, Virginia, USA, 2012–2013 · Folin–Ciocalteu, reported as gallic acid equivalents. · Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
A Folin–Ciocalteu figure in gallic acid equivalents. It is not interchangeable with a Löwenthal permanganate “tannin” figure: the two assays respond to different things and can differ by a factor of two on the same juice.
All phenolic compounds together, usually reported as gallic acid equivalents. Measured in milligrams per litre.
Compare within a study to see where these figures sat among the other cultivars the same work analysed — which is a more robust statement than the figures themselves, because absolute values move between laboratories and the ordering inside one study mostly survives.
Watched in the orchard
What named research programmes recorded about this fruit at their own sites. Bloom, harvest and cropping belong to a place and a run of seasons rather than to a cultivar, so they are reported site by site rather than merged.
Virginia cultivar polyphenol characterisation
Winchester, in the northern Shenandoah Valley, Virginia · 2012–2013 · Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Humid subtropical shading into continental, with hot summers — warm enough that acid falls faster through the ripening period than it does in a maritime autumn, which is part of why the titratable acidities here run lower than English figures for comparable fruit.
- Held as
- Listed as “Pink Lady”
Soluble solids by refractometer, pH by meter, titratable acidity by titration as malic acid, total polyphenols by Folin–Ciocalteu as gallic acid equivalents. Twenty cultivars, one site.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Very late
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
Needs an exceptionally long season — well over two hundred days from bloom — which restricts it to warm regions. In Australia and South Africa it is picked in April and May.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Requires a very long growing season | high | The decisive constraint: it will not colour or ripen where the season is short, which excludes most of the traditional cider regions of the northern hemisphere. |
| Apple scab | moderate | — |
| Sunburn | high | A hot-climate problem that downgrades a large share of the crop and sends it to processing. |
Juice and pressing
- High sugar with acid that persists better than in Gala or Fuji.
- No tannin.
- A restrained aroma.
- Large volumes of downgraded fruit available because the trade-mark colour specification is strict.
How it is used
- A premium fresh-market apple in Australia, South Africa, Chile and the northern-hemisphere warm regions.
- Pressed in quantity as fruit that fails the Pink Lady colour and quality specification.
- A blending component in Australian and South African cider.
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
Better than most warm-climate dessert apples on its own because it keeps some acid, though it remains sweet, soft-finishing and without structure.
About Cripps Pink
Cripps Pink was bred for the Western Australian climate: hot, long-seasoned and difficult for apples that expect a northern autumn. Its distinguishing achievement is that it holds usable acid alongside high sugar in that climate, which most warm-region dessert apples do not, and that combination is why it is the most useful of the modern southern-hemisphere commercial cultivars to a cider maker.
A large proportion of the crop never reaches a fresh-market shelf. Pink Lady is a trade mark with a colour and quality specification attached, and fruit that misses it — undercoloured, sunburnt, undersized — is either sold under the cultivar name or goes to processing. In Australia and the Western Cape that downgraded fruit is a substantial and predictable input to the cider and juice trade.
What it does not have is any phenolic content, and it shares that with every other cultivar in this section. The southern-hemisphere cider industries have no indigenous tannin fruit at all: Australia, New Zealand and South Africa grow dessert and export apples, and a producer who wants structure either imports European cultivars and waits for the trees or does without. That is the defining constraint on southern-hemisphere cider and it is a different constraint from the North American one, where at least Hewe’s Crab, Yates and the Limbertwigs exist.
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 · documented
Raised by John Cripps for the Western Australian Department of Agriculture; the cross and the date are documented.
Parentage · a recorded cross
Golden Delicious crossed with Lady Williams, an Australian cultivar with no CiderHQ record. Recorded as a cross by the breeding programme that made it, which is strong evidence about what was intended and weaker evidence about which pollen took; no genotyping study CiderHQ has read confirms it.
The breeding programme recorded making this cross. Strong evidence about what was intended; weaker evidence about which pollen actually took, which only genotyping settles.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Pink Lady | Trade name | The trade mark under which Cripps Pink fruit meeting a colour and quality specification is sold. It is a brand, not a cultivar name, and fruit that fails the specification is sold as Cripps Pink or goes to processing. |
Related cultivars
Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.
Parentage
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.
Boskoop
A large, russeted, extremely acid Dutch apple found at Boskoop in the mid-nineteenth century, grown across northern Europe as a culinary fruit and used heavily in German and Swiss *Most*.
Brettacher
A large, acid, exceptionally long-keeping Württemberg apple found as a chance seedling in the early twentieth century, and one of the most planted *Most* cultivars of southern Germany.
GoldRush
A scab-resistant Golden Delicious descendant released in 1994, unusually high in both sugar and acid, exceptionally long-keeping, and one of the modern American selections that cider makers actively seek out.
Sturmer Pippin
An English-raised apple that became a southern-hemisphere export staple — very late, very long-keeping, firmly acid, and for a century the backbone of the Tasmanian and Nelson orchard trade.
Winesap
A dark red mid-Atlantic apple named for its wine-like juice, one of the very few American cultivars whose name records a cider use, and a reliable acid contributor to eastern blends.
Newton Wonder
A large English dual-purpose apple, sharper than a dessert fruit and sweeter than Bramley, pressed on farms and used in modern blends for acid with some substance.
Styles it is characteristic of
Australian cider
Cider from Australia, dominated by a large mainstream sector using dessert fruit and concentrate, with a smaller full-juice movement working from cool-climate orchards.
South African cider
Cider from South Africa, where a very large mainstream category built on Western Cape dessert fruit dominates and a small craft sector works alongside it.
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 with granny smith
- Is golden delicious used to make cider — Heavily, and by volume it is one of the largest single inputs to cider worldwide. It brings sugar and a genuine honeyed aroma; what it does not bring is acid or tannin, so it is a component rather than a cider.
- How is supermarket cider made
- Do you need to sort apples before pressing
- What is australian cider
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.
Washington State University cider research programme
Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center · university · passage verified 2026-08-24
The single most useful open cider dataset CiderHQ has found. The programme’s cultivar performance database gives juice chemistry, orchard behaviour, bloom and harvest timing and cider-maker tasting notes for 73 cultivars grown at one maritime site over fifteen years, and — unusually — publishes its classification thresholds alongside its figures, so the classification can be checked rather than taken on trust. It also states outright that its results diverge from the English ones. Read in full on 2026-08-24 and transcribed into `data/trials/wsu-mount-vernon.ts`; four published figures were found to be impossible and are withheld there with their reasons.
GRIN-Global germplasm database — Malus and Pyrus
United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
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.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.