Cider apple
Dove
A Devon bittersweet with soft tannin and irregular cropping, known now chiefly as the fruit from which Improved Dove was selected.
Also written Old Dove, Dove Apple.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Bittersweet base, Sugar and body
- Origin
- Devon
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
How it is classified
Long Ashton classification
Bittersweet
Low acid, high tannin. The class that has no real equivalent in dessert fruit and that defines West Country cider.
Basis: Below about 0.45% w/v acid and above about 0.2% w/v tannin.
A medium bittersweet with soft tannin. Analyses attributed to "Dove" may cover the improved selection as well as the original.
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 | Restrained | |
| Body | Medium |
Description in Devon cultivar listings, with confidence held low because the record does not always separate this fruit from Improved Dove.
Contributes soft, rounded tannin and moderate weight.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Dove, 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 Dove. 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
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
October.
Irregular cropping is the fault that the Improved Dove selection was made to correct.
No pollination group is separately recorded for the original.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Low acid
- Soft tannin
How it is used
- A bittersweet component of Devon farm blends
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
A component fruit with no varietal tradition.
About Dove
Dove is the original of a pair. It is a Devon bittersweet with soft, rounded tannin and a habit of cropping heavily one year and barely at all the next, and at some point in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century somebody selected a better-cropping tree from it and called it Improved Dove.
Both survive, both are listed, and the analytical record does not reliably distinguish them. Figures published under "Dove" may describe either. This record keeps them separate because they are separate cultivars and states plainly that the numbers do not follow the distinction.
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 Devon cider apple of unrecorded origin. The name is old and undecorated, which usually indicates long local currency.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Improved Dove | Disputed identity | A distinct selection, recorded separately. The two are regularly conflated in orchard listings. |
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.
Dabinett
The most widely planted English cider apple: a small, late-ripening bittersweet whose soft, full tannin ferments into a cider that needs almost nothing added to it.
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.
Harry Masters’ Jersey
A medium bittersweet from the Yarlington district, valued for tannin that is full without being harsh, and among the more reliable croppers in a class that is generally unreliable.
Hangdown
A Devon mild bittersweet named for its weeping habit, sitting close enough to the tannin threshold that sources place it on both sides of it.
Improved Dove
A selected form of the Devon bittersweet Dove, giving better cropping and cleaner fruit than the original while keeping its soft, full tannin.
Reine des Pommes
A dark red Norman bittersweet with a grand name and a solid reputation, imported into England alongside Michelin and Médaille d’Or and analysed there as a bittersweet of some quality.
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 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.
- 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.
- What is devon 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.
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.