Cider apple
Democrat
A Tasmanian apple of the late nineteenth century, extremely hard and extremely long-keeping, grown for the export trade and now used by Tasmanian cider makers as a very late-season component.
Also written Democrat.
- Classification
- Not classified under any recorded system
- Harvest
- Very late (November onwards)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Late season, Acid lift
- Origin
- Tasmania
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
How it is classified
No classification scheme has been recorded for Democrat. 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 | High | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Medium |
Description of a hard, dense, very late-keeping Tasmanian apple. The bands are wide because the descriptive record is thin and no analysis exists in CiderHQ’s register.
Very hard and dense, sharp and unyielding at picking, softening slowly in store into a firm, moderately sharp juice.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Democrat, 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.
Fruit weight116 g
New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York, USA, late 1970s · Mean fruit weight as published. The compiler notes that a typical New York dessert apple weighs about 140 g, so most of these are small fruit — which is normal for cider cultivars and is itself the point of the column. · AVI / Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989, edited by Donald L. Downing (ISBN 0-442-22117-7)
Reaches CiderHQ through a transcription of a 1989 food-technology chapter, which itself printed unpublished 1980 work from the station. Unlike the chemistry in this dataset it is a measurement of the fruit rather than of the finished cider, so it is comparable with other fruit weights.
Mass of a single fruit. Measured in grams.
Total acid (finished cider)0.370 % w/v
New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York, USA, late 1970s · Titration, reported as malic acid. Analysis of finished cider. · AVI / Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989, edited by Donald L. Downing (ISBN 0-442-22117-7)
Measured on finished cider after a spontaneous fermentation, not on juice. It is not comparable with a juice figure for the same cultivar, and the gap between the two is not a disagreement between laboratories — it is what fermentation did.
Acid measured after fermentation. Kept apart from the juice figure because malolactic conversion and yeast acid production both move it. Measured in percent weight per volume.
pH (finished cider)3.63 pH
New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York, USA, late 1970s · Meter on finished cider. · AVI / Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989, edited by Donald L. Downing (ISBN 0-442-22117-7)
Measured on finished cider after a spontaneous fermentation, not on juice. It is not comparable with a juice figure for the same cultivar, and the gap between the two is not a disagreement between laboratories — it is what fermentation did.
Acid strength after fermentation, which is what governs microbial risk and sulphite behaviour in the vessel rather than in the press. Measured in ph.
Total tannin (finished cider)0.044 % w/v
New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York, USA, late 1970s · Method not stated by the source, which is a real limitation: different tannin methods give wildly different figures on the same sample. · AVI / Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989, edited by Donald L. Downing (ISBN 0-442-22117-7)
Measured on finished cider after a spontaneous fermentation, not on juice. It is not comparable with a juice figure for the same cultivar, and the gap between the two is not a disagreement between laboratories — it is what fermentation did. The compiler notes these tannin figures run at roughly half the Long Ashton juice figures for the same cultivars, and cannot say how much of that is fermentation, how much is Geneva, and how much is method.
Phenolic load measured after fermentation, routinely well below the juice figure for the same fruit because fermentation, fining and time remove phenolic material. Measured in percent weight per volume.
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.
NYSAES Geneva cider cultivar analyses
New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York · late 1970s · AVI / Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989, edited by Donald L. Downing (ISBN 0-442-22117-7)
Humid continental, with a hotter summer and a colder winter than any European cider region. The compiler suggests the growing conditions may be part of why the phenolic figures sit so far below the English ones, and is careful not to claim it.
- Held as
- Listed as “Democrat”
Analysis of finished cider after a spontaneous fermentation. Acid by titration as malic; pH by meter; tannin by an unstated method; fruit weight as a mean. The data appear to come from a single season, and the original work was unpublished.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Very late
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
The last of the Tasmanian season, and traditionally held for months afterwards.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Bruising resistance | low | Its extreme hardness made it a good shipping apple; the assessment is general cultivar description rather than any registered Australian trial. |
Juice and pressing
- Firm acid held through long storage.
- A little skin phenolic, more than most dessert fruit.
- Moderate sugar that improves markedly with time in store.
How it is used
- A Tasmanian export apple of the shipping era, valued for hardness and keeping rather than for eating.
- Pressed at the end of the season by Tasmanian cider makers.
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Rarely bottled alone, and the evidence base is too thin to describe what such a cider would reliably be.
About Democrat
Democrat belongs to the same Tasmanian export economy as Sturmer Pippin and was selected on the same criteria: hard enough to survive a long sea voyage, sound enough to arrive saleable. It is a dense, unyielding apple that nobody would eat by choice at picking, and it improves substantially over a winter in store.
Modern Tasmanian cider makers use it to extend the pressing season. Fruit that can be held for months lets a small producer mill through the winter rather than compressing the whole year’s work into a few weeks, and Democrat and Sturmer between them do that for the Tasmanian industry.
The record is short because the evidence is. Australian cultivar documentation from the export era is markedly thinner than the American or English equivalents, CiderHQ holds no southern-hemisphere research source competent for juice analysis, and the descriptive record for Democrat is sparse. The wide bands in the blend profile above are an accurate representation of that uncertainty rather than a hedge.
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
Consistently reported as Tasmanian and as arising in the export-orchard era, but without a documented raiser or orchard. Australian cultivar records of this period are thinner than their North American equivalents.
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.
Blanquina
A pale-skinned Asturian cultivar of high reputation, and — like Raxao, with which it is usually named — an acid-block fruit rather than a semi-acid one.
Regona
The most acid cultivar the Asturian designation characterises, at 7,1 g/L, and one of the most planted: a late, hard, acid-bitter fruit that supplies the backbone of *sidra natural*.
Rheinischer Bohnapfel
The classic German *Mostapfel*: a very late, very acid, enormously productive Rhineland cultivar that carried more Apfelwein and Viez through the twentieth century than any other single fruit.
Txalaka
The most widely recognised Basque cider apple: a hard, sharp, late cultivar from Gipuzkoa that supplies much of the acid backbone of *sagardoa*.
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.
Styles it is characteristic of
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
- How long can apples be kept before pressing
- What apple were the tasmanian export orchards built on — Sturmer Pippin — an English-raised apple that became a southern-hemisphere export staple. Very late, very long-keeping and firmly acid, it was for a century the backbone of the Tasmanian and Nelson orchards.
- What is australian cider
- Is cider made in australia — Yes, and mostly from fruit grown for something else. Victoria is Australia’s largest apple and pear state, and cider there is overwhelmingly a use for surplus dessert fruit rather than a crop grown for the purpose.
- Is cider made in tasmania
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.
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.
Cider and perry production technical training material
Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy · reference work · registered as competent for this subject
Searched again on 2026-08-25 and it remains the one printed source here that a bibliographic check cannot fix, because it is not a published work with an edition. It is course material issued to participants of a training programme, so there is no catalogue record to verify, no ISBN, and no lawful public copy. Its state stays `registered` for that reason rather than through inattention.
Expert reference Evidence standard for this record. What that means.