Cider apple
Durona de Tresali
A very hard, very late Asturian cultivar from the parish of Tresali, in the acid-bitter block, and one of the last fruits of the season to be pressed.
Also written Durona, Durona de Tresalí.
- Classification
- Acid-bitter — Asturian technological blocks
- Harvest
- Very late (November onwards)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Late season, Tannin and structure
- Origin
- Tresali, Nava, Asturias
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 4
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
How it is classified
Asturian technological blocks
Acid-bitter · Ácido-amargo
Acid dominant with real phenolic weight behind it. The nearest Asturian equivalent to a bittersharp.
Assessed in Asturias, as characterised for the protected designation.
Published by the Consejo Regulador of DOP Sidra de Asturias as “Ácido ligeramente amargo”, on total acidity 4,9 g/L as sulphuric acid and total polyphenols 1,3 g/L as tannic acid. Asturian practice reports acidity as sulphuric acid, so the figure is not directly comparable with an English or North American malic-acid one.
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 | Moderate | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Noticeable | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Published figures for the protected designation: total acidity 4,9 g/L as sulphuric acid, total polyphenols 1,3 g/L as tannic acid.
Extremely hard-fleshed and firmly acid, with a drying edge from phenolics somewhat above the Asturian average.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Durona de Tresali, 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.
Titratable acidity4.9 g/L
Asturias, Spain, Published characterisation, retrieved 2026-08-24 · Total acidity expressed as sulphuric acid equivalent, the Spanish convention. Not comparable with a malic-acid figure without conversion: multiply by about 1.37 to reach malic-acid equivalent. · Consejo Regulador de la DOP Sidra de Asturias
Acid measured by neutralisation — the quantity of acid, not its strength. Measured in grams per litre.
Total phenolics1.3 g/L
Asturias, Spain, Published characterisation, retrieved 2026-08-24 · Total polyphenols expressed as tannic acid equivalent. · Consejo Regulador de la DOP Sidra de Asturias
All phenolic compounds together, usually reported as gallic acid equivalents. Measured in grams 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.
DOP Sidra de Asturias varietal characterisation
Asturias, northern Spain · Published characterisation, retrieved 2026-08-24 · Consejo Regulador de la DOP Sidra de Asturias
Atlantic and markedly wet — cool summers, mild winters and high rainfall on the Bay of Biscay coast, a climate that suits high-acid fruit and long, cool ferments.
- Harvest
- the last ten days of November (published as “3ª decena de noviembre”)
Filed here as acido-amargo.
Vigour: moderate to high. Susceptibility to fungal disease: very low. Flowering: very late. Cropping: a good level of cropping. As characterised by the Consejo Regulador.
Total acidity expressed as grams per litre of sulphuric acid, the Spanish convention; total polyphenols as grams per litre of tannic acid. Characterisation carried out by the fruit-research programme of SERIDA and published by the Consejo Regulador.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Very late
- Flowering
- Pollination group 4
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
The Consejo Regulador records ripening in the last ten days of November (“3ª decena de noviembre”).
Exceptional. It is the cultivar an Asturian maker relies on to keep a press running into the winter.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Acid at 4,9 g/L, with enough phenolic weight to place it in the acid-bitter block
- Phenolics of 1,3 g/L, above the regional floor
- Ripens in the last ten days of November and stores for months after
How it is used
- Late and winter pressings in Asturian llagares
- On the permitted-variety list of the Asturian protected designation
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
The combination of acid and a little grip gives it more to say alone than most Asturian fruit, though the tradition remains a blending one.
About Durona de Tresali
The duronas are the hard-fleshed Asturian apples, and Durona de Tresali is the best known of them, named for a parish in the Nalón valley. Its hardness is the practical point: it ripens in the last ten days of November and stores for months, which lets a llagar press long after the harvest is over.
The Consejo Regulador files it as ácido ligeramente amargo — acid, slightly bitter — on 4,9 g/L of acidity and 1,3 g/L of polyphenols. CiderHQ records the acid-bitter block and keeps the Consejo’s qualifier, because the phenolic figure is real but modest, and calling the fruit bitter without qualification would overstate it.
Susceptibility to fungal disease is recorded as very low, and the tree flowers very late. On the Bay of Biscay coast both matter more than they would inland: late flowering avoids frost, and disease resistance is the difference between a crop and a write-off in a wet year.
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
Named for the parish it was selected in, which is the standard Asturian pattern. Nava is one of the historic centres of Asturian cider and a plausible place of origin, but the attribution is traditional rather than documented.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Durona | Regional name | Asturias. The bare form means simply “the hard one” and is applied to more than one late Asturian cultivar. |
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.
Lin
An Asturian cider apple admitted to the protected designation and characterised as acid-bitter — 5,86 g/L of acid well above the register’s median, with 2,0 g/L of polyphenols, ripening in the second ten days of November.
Montoto
An Asturian cider apple admitted to the protected designation and characterised as acid-bitter — 5,11 g/L of acid above the register’s median, with 1,63 g/L of polyphenols, ripening in the first ten days of November.
Picón
An Asturian cider apple admitted to the protected designation and characterised as acid-bitter — 6,78 g/L of acid well above the register’s median, with 2,01 g/L of polyphenols, ripening in the last ten days of November.
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*.
Martina
An Asturian cider apple admitted to the protected designation and characterised as acid-bitter — 6,08 g/L of acid well above the register’s median, with 1,79 g/L of polyphenols, ripening in the last ten days of September.
Trierer Weinapfel
The characteristic apple of Moselle *Viez*: a small, hard, very acid fruit from the Trier country, with a little more phenolic grip than most German cider apples.
Styles it is characteristic of
Sidra natural
The still, dry, unfiltered cider of Asturias and the Basque Country, wild-fermented from local high-acid fruit and poured from a height to raise a momentary sparkle.
Sidra de nueva expresión
A modern Asturian category of filtered, clean, dry cider made with controlled fermentation and presented in a wine format rather than in the poured tradition.
Sidra espumosa
Sparkling Asturian cider made by a second fermentation under pressure or in bottle, presented as a fine sparkling drink rather than in the still poured tradition.
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 are apples milled for cider
- How do you blend cider
- What is sidra natural — Sidra natural is the still, dry, unfiltered cider of Asturias and the Basque Country, bottled without added carbonation and poured from a height to rouse it. It is tart, funky and made to be drunk in small measures poured one at a time.
- How long can apples be kept before pressing
- What is asturian 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.
Servicio Regional de Investigación y Desarrollo Agroalimentario (SERIDA)
Principado de Asturias · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The Asturian regional agri-food research service, and the technical authority behind the Asturian cultivar classification and the analysis of sidra natural. SERIDA’s own site has not been opened; what CiderHQ has read is SERIDA’s varietal characterisation as republished by the Consejo Regulador of DOP Sidra de Asturias, which credits it explicitly. The Asturian measurements therefore cite the Consejo rather than SERIDA — citing the body that did the work, at a document CiderHQ has not seen, would be exactly the kind of borrowed authority this register exists to prevent.
Denominación de Origen Protegida Sidra de Asturias
Consejo Regulador de la DOP Sidra de Asturias · designation authority · passage verified 2026-08-24
The regulating council for Asturian cider. Read on 2026-08-24, and it turned out to carry far more than a permitted-variety list: an agronomic and technological characterisation of each admitted variety, with total acidity, total polyphenols, vigour, flowering, ripening, cropping and susceptibility to fungal disease. The characterisation is credited to SERIDA’s fruit-research programme. Two things it settles are corrections to what CiderHQ previously held: Asturias sorts cider fruit into nine technological blocks rather than five, and it publishes acidity as sulphuric acid rather than malic. The figures are transcribed into `data/trials/serida-asturias.ts` and cite this source, because this is where they were read.
Primary authority Evidence standard for this record. What that means.