Cider apple
Doux Normandie
A Norman sweet apple grown for sugar and alcohol, one of the douce cultivars that supply the fermentable weight a bittersweet-heavy blend needs.
Also written Doux de Normandie, Doux Normand.
- Classification
- Sweet — French cider apple families
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Sugar and body, Bulk juice
- Origin
- Normandy
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
- Evidence
- Analysed in 2 sources, watched at 2 trial sites
How it is classified
French cider apple families
Sweet · Douce
Low acid, low tannin. Sugar and body.
Basis: Tannin below 2 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 drink will be.
| Axis | Typical | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Acid | Very low | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | None | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
French sweet family placement; the wide sugar band reflects the looseness of the name.
Sweet, soft and mild, with the faintest tannic edge and very little acid.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Doux Normandie, 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.
Measured on the fruit
Measured on the fruit itself, before anything was done to it. These figures hold whatever was later made from the juice.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fruit diameter2 readings, spanning 62–63 mm | 62 mm | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 63 mm (57–70) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit | |
| Fruit firmness | 64.0 N (57.3–70.8) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Fruit weight | 113 g (85–140) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Juice yield | 569 L/t | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Starch pattern index | 8.0 SPI | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
Measured on the juice
Measured on juice as pressed, before fermentation. This is where most cider analysis lives and what the classification schemes are defined on.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brix2 readings, spanning 11.8–13.8 °Bx | 11.8 °Bx | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 13.8 °Bx (13.2–14.5) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit | |
| pH2 readings, spanning 3.80–4.10 pH | 3.80 pH | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 4.10 pH (4.02–4.18) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit | |
| Fructose | 66.2 g/L (43.1–89.3)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Glucose | 20.5 g/L (16.4–24.6)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Sorbitol | 5.6 g/L (2.6–8.6)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Specific gravity | 1.047 SG | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Sucrose | 32.9 g/L (16.4–49.4)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Titratable acidity | 2.6 g/L (1.7–3.5) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Total acid | 0.330 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Total phenolics | 2720.0 mg/L (2590.0–2850.0) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Total tannin | 0.290 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
3 properties here have been measured more than once. The readings are shown as they were taken and are deliberately not averaged — climate, season, ripeness at picking, the age of the tree and the analytical method all move these numbers, and a single figure would hide every one of them. Where a spread is given below a property, it is the distance between separate studies, not the variation within any one of them.
How these were measured
- Permanganate titration against indigo carmine, reported as tannic acid equivalent
- Titration, reported as malic acid equivalent
- Published as 2.43 inches; converted at 25.4 mm to the inch
- Juice pressed from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Published as 258 mL/lb; converted at 2.204623 lb to the kilogram
- Mean of the fruit sampled per accession; where a bracket is shown it is one standard deviation either side of the mean, not the observed range. Published to two decimal places and shown at the precision CiderHQ displays for the unit.
- Mean of the fruit sampled per accession; where a bracket is shown it is one standard deviation either side of the mean, not the observed range.
- Cornell generic starch–iodine chart, 1–8, where 1 is no hydrolysis and 8 is complete. Mean of replicate fruit; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of it.
- Penetrometer, mean of replicate fruit; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Refractometer on pressed juice. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Titration to pH 8.1 with sodium hydroxide, reported as malic acid equivalents. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- The starting pH recorded by the autotitrator before titration, on juice stored frozen at −80 °C and thawed; the source describes no separate pH measurement. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Folin–Ciocalteu assay against gallic acid standards, published in grams per litre of gallic acid equivalent and stored here as milligrams per litre by exact conversion. The source converts these figures to Löwenthal tannic acid equivalents, by a laboratory factor of 1.6, only to sort its accessions into classes; the figure here is the unconverted one.
- Enzymatic assay (Megazyme). Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- D-sorbitol/xylitol assay kit (Megazyme), sorbitol dehydrogenase method. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Glucose, fructose, sucrose and sorbitol: Not used in any distribution, ranking or comparison. This programme’s enzyme-assayed sugars do not reconcile with its own refractometer readings across the collection — for many varieties the sugars add up to more than the Brix reading allows. The figures were checked against the thesis’s own tables in October 2026 and are transcribed exactly: the disagreement is in the published source, which does not say which reading is wrong. Proportions between glucose, fructose and sucrose, which came from one assay, are still used in summary.
- A chart position, not a quantity. Almost every accession here scored at or near 8, which says the fruit was picked at or past full starch conversion rather than that the cultivars are alike.
- One harvest at one site. Soluble solids move several degrees between seasons and with crop load.
- A Folin–Ciocalteu figure counts everything that reduces the reagent, not tannin alone, and is not interchangeable with a Löwenthal permanganate figure for the same juice. Compare this reading with other Folin–Ciocalteu readings in gallic acid equivalents.
Where it sits among the varieties each programme measured
| Programme | Property | Doux Normandie | Programme median | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Titratable acidity as malic | 2.6 g/L | 4.1 g/L | Above 18 and below 28 of the other 46: lower middle |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | pH | 4.10 | 3.64 | Above 27 and below 13 of the other 40: upper middle |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Total phenolics | 2720 mg/L | 980 mg/L | Above 43 and below 3 of the other 46: highest quarter |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Brix | 13.8 °Bx | 12.5 °Bx | Above 36 and below 10 of the other 46: highest quarter |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Fruit diameter | 63.0 mm | 65.0 mm | Above 16, level with 2, below 28 of the other 46: lower middle |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Fruit weight | 113 g | 124 g | Above 18 and below 28 of the other 46: lower middle |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Fruit firmness | 64.0 N | 58.9 N | Above 25 and below 19 of the other 44: upper middle |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Starch pattern index | 8.0 SPI | 8.0 SPI | Above 20, level with 24, below 0 of the other 44: upper middle |
| The WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial | Total acid | 0.33 % w/v | 0.32 % w/v | Above 28 and below 22 of the other 50: upper middle |
| The WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial | pH | 3.80 | 3.92 | Above 18 and below 27 of the other 45: lower middle |
| The WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial | Total tannin | 0.29 % w/v | 0.20 % w/v | Above 33 and below 11 of the other 44: highest quarter |
| The WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial | Specific gravity | 1.047 | 1.051 | Above 9, level with 3, below 32 of the other 44: lowest quarter |
| The WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial | Brix | 11.8 °Bx | 12.5 °Bx | Above 14, level with 2, below 34 of the other 50: lower middle |
| The WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial | Juice yield | 569.0 L/t | 545.0 L/t | Above 32 and below 10 of the other 42: highest quarter |
| The WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial | Fruit diameter | 62.0 mm | 63.0 mm | Above 19, level with 1, below 23 of the other 43: lower middle |
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.
WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial
Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center, Mount Vernon, Skagit Valley, Washington · 2002–2017 · Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center
Maritime, with cool summers and mild wet winters — the closest North American analogue to the English West Country, and the reason the programme planted European cider fruit here rather than east of the Cascades.
- Mean full bloom
- 12 May
- Harvest
- 6 October
- Bloom density
- 3.7 of 5
- Productivity
- 3.1 of 5
- Growth habit
- –
- Bearing
- –
- Alternate bearing
- Yes
- Rootstocks
- M9
Filed here as bittersweet.
Juice characteristics measured on 250 mL of pressed juice; juice yield from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Bloom density, productivity and blind wood are the site’s own subjective 1–5 ratings. Figures are means across the seasons each cultivar was in the trial.
USDA-PGRU Malus germplasm characterisation
USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, in the Finger Lakes region of western New York State · 2017 · Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Humid continental, with cold winters and warm summers moderated by the Finger Lakes — a sharper seasonal swing than any of the European cider regions whose fruit the collection holds, and warm enough in late summer to bring acid down faster than a maritime autumn does.
- Held as
- PI 589667, held as “Doux Normandie”
One harvest season. Fruit assessed for weight, diameter, starch pattern index on the Cornell 1–8 chart and flesh firmness by penetrometer; juice pressed and measured for soluble solids by refractometer, titratable acidity by titration to pH 8.1 as malic acid, pH as the autotitrator’s starting reading on juice that had been frozen, total phenolics by Folin–Ciocalteu assay as gallic acid equivalent, and glucose, fructose, sucrose and sorbitol by enzymatic assay.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
109 other cultivars on this site with a recorded group could pollinate it — diploids flowering in group 3 or a group either side. See which, with their class and harvest window.
Juice and pressing
- High sugar and therefore high potential alcohol
- Minimal tannin
- Very low acid
How it is used
- Gravity and body in Norman blends
- Base juice for cider destined for Calvados, where alcohol yield matters directly
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Alone it makes a soft, high-alcohol, structureless cider at a risky pH.
About Doux Normandie
The douce family is the least discussed and most used part of the French cider repertoire. Bitters get the attention and sharps get the technical arguments, but a Norman blend needs sugar, and sweet apples with no acid and no tannin are what supply it. Doux Normandie is a representative of that group rather than a distinguished individual.
Its importance rises sharply where cider is being distilled. Calvados is made from cider, and the still cares about alcohol and about the aromatic precursors that survive distillation, not about the acid balance that makes a table cider pleasant. A high-sugar, low-acid sweet apple that would make a poor cider can make a perfectly good base for spirit, and Norman orchards were planted with both destinations in mind.
The name is unreliable enough to be worth flagging plainly. “Sweet Norman” is a description; trees sold under it in different districts are not certainly one clone, and a reader encountering it in a producer’s cultivar list should treat it as a class rather than as an identification.
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 name so generic — “the sweet Norman one” — that it has almost certainly been applied to more than one fruit. It is recorded here as a single cultivar because French practice does, with that reservation stated.
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.
Douce Coëtligné
A large, pale, genuinely sweet Breton apple with very little acid and very little tannin, grown for the sugar and body it puts into a blend rather than for any character of its own.
Blanc Mollet
A soft, pale, early Norman sweet apple that must be pressed almost as soon as it is picked, and whose name says exactly that about it.
Muscadet de Dieppe
An aromatic Norman sweet apple from the Dieppe country, grown for the musky perfume it lends a blend rather than for acid, tannin or sugar.
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.
Golden Delicious
A West Virginia chance seedling of about 1890 that became one of the most planted and most bred-from apples in history — high in sugar, low in acid, and by volume one of the largest single inputs to cider worldwide.
Somerset Redstreak
A mild bittersweet planted at very large scale in the late twentieth century for its heavy, regular cropping on bush trees, and a fruit whose commercial importance exceeds its character.
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 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 pommeau — Pommeau is a French aperitif made by blending unfermented apple juice with apple brandy, so that the spirit stops the juice fermenting, and then ageing the result in wood. It sits at around 16 to 18 per cent alcohol.
- How is pommeau made — Apple brandy is added to fresh, unfermented apple juice in a proportion high enough that the yeast cannot work, and the blend is then aged in oak. The sweetness is the fruit’s own sugar, never fermented.
- What is normandy 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.
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.
Institut national de l’origine et de la qualité (INAO)
INAO · regulator · passage verified 2026-08-24
The Cidre Pays d’Auge cahier des charges was read in full on 2026-08-24, in the version homologated by arrêté of 17 January 2026 and published in the Journal officiel on 21 January. That qualification is not decoration. A revision adopted by the Comité national on 10 September 2025 is currently under the procédure nationale d’opposition, is clearly marked as not prejudging the final text, and specifies carbonation differently from the text in force — as grams of CO2 per litre rather than as a minimum pressure in bar. A summary citing the draft would have put a figure on the page that no producer is held to. CiderHQ records the operative text and says which one it is.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.