Cider apple
Egremont Russet
A russeted English dessert apple with a nutty, dry character, pressed by modern producers for an aroma quite unlike anything a cider apple provides.
Also written Egremont Russet Apple, Egremont.
- Classification
- Sharp — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Aroma, Sugar and body
- Origin
- England, associated with the Earls of Egremont at Petworth
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 2
- Vigour
- Low — a small, manageable tree
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
Long Ashton classification
Sharp
High acid, low tannin. Includes both purpose-grown sharps and many culinary apples.
Basis: Above about 0.45% w/v acid and below about 0.2% w/v tannin.
A sharp when pressed, though a mild one: moderate acid and negligible tannin. Placed on description rather than on a cider analysis.
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 | Moderate | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Pronounced | |
| Body | Medium |
Description of a moderately acidic, aromatic dessert apple. No cider analysis is attached, and the tannin band is raised slightly above dessert-fruit norms because the heavy russet skin carries some phenolic material. 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.
Brings a dry, nutty aromatic quality that is unusual in a cider and comes directly from the fruit.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Egremont Russet, 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.
Specific gravity1.063 SG
England — the source does not name the orchards, 1922–1977 · Published in the two-figure form the table uses (a printed 51 meaning 1.051) and written here in full. · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
A National Association of Cider Makers compilation crediting three bodies of work — MAFF/ADAS acidity and pH from freshly harvested fruit, Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties reported in 1977, and the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. The compilation does not say which row came from which, so no row can be dated more precisely than the span of the three.
Juice density, the practical proxy for sugar before fermentation. Measured in specific gravity.
Total acid0.530 % w/v
England — the source does not name the orchards, 1922–1977 · Titration, reported as malic acid, on juice from freshly harvested fruit. · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
A National Association of Cider Makers compilation crediting three bodies of work — MAFF/ADAS acidity and pH from freshly harvested fruit, Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties reported in 1977, and the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. The compilation does not say which row came from which, so no row can be dated more precisely than the span of the three. Several cultivars appear more than once in this table under sample numbers, and the repeats are far apart: Bramley’s acid is 1.21, 1.05 and 1.43 per cent in three rows. Read any single row as one pressing of one parcel of fruit.
How much acid the juice contains, conventionally reported as malic acid. Measured in percent weight per volume.
Total tannin0.100 % w/v
England — the source does not name the orchards, 1922–1977 · Method not stated in the compilation; the Long Ashton work behind it used Löwenthal permanganate titration. · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
A National Association of Cider Makers compilation crediting three bodies of work — MAFF/ADAS acidity and pH from freshly harvested fruit, Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties reported in 1977, and the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. The compilation does not say which row came from which, so no row can be dated more precisely than the span of the three.
The phenolic fraction responsible for bitterness and astringency. Measured in percent weight per volume.
pH3.70 pH
England — the source does not name the orchards, 1922–1977 · Meter on juice from freshly harvested fruit. · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
A National Association of Cider Makers compilation crediting three bodies of work — MAFF/ADAS acidity and pH from freshly harvested fruit, Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties reported in 1977, and the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. The compilation does not say which row came from which, so no row can be dated more precisely than the span of the three.
Acid strength, which governs microbial risk and sulphite effectiveness. Measured in ph.
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.
Typical English apple juice analyses
England — the compilation does not name the orchards · 1922–1977 · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
English fruit-growing country, and no closer than that: the source gives neither site nor season for any individual row, which is a real limit on what the figures can be asked to do.
- Held as
- Listed as “Egremont Russet”
Juice from freshly harvested fruit. Acidity and pH credited to MAFF/ADAS; the remainder to Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties (1977) and to the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. Specific gravity is printed in a two-figure form and written out in full here.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Pollination group 2
- Vigour
- Low — a small, manageable tree
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Good
October.
Early flowering, and correspondingly exposed to spring frost.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | low | Russeted skin is associated with better scab tolerance, and Egremont Russet is comparatively clean. |
| Powdery mildew | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Moderate acid
- Low tannin, with a little from the heavy russet skin
- Good sugar
- Distinctive nutty aroma
How it is used
- An English dessert apple with a long-standing following
- Pressed by modern producers for aroma in blends and as a varietal
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
Bottled alone by a number of modern producers. The nutty, dry character makes a distinctive cider, though the absence of tannin leaves it structurally light.
About Egremont Russet
Egremont Russet is the English russet that survived into the supermarket era, and its dry, nutty, slightly astringent character makes it unusual among dessert apples. Pressed, it gives a cider that smells and tastes of something other than fruit — the closest a British apple gets to a savoury aromatic — and a small number of producers have built distinctive ciders on it.
The russet skin is worth a note. Heavy russeting is a corky modification of the epidermis, and it carries somewhat more phenolic material than a smooth skin. That does not make Egremont Russet a bittersweet by any stretch, but it gives the juice a faint grip that most dessert fruit lacks, and it correlates with better scab tolerance in the orchard.
It is a small, unvigorous tree that crops moderately, so it is not a volume proposition. Producers using it are generally buying fruit or growing a few rows for a specific bottling rather than treating it as a blend component.
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 Earl of Egremont and associated with Petworth in Sussex. It entered the nursery trade in the later nineteenth century; the raising itself is not documented.
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.
Golden Russet
The highest-gravity fruit in widespread North American cider use — a small bronze russet from New York whose juice regularly presses above 1.060 and which many revival makers treat as their benchmark cultivar.
Wickson Crab
A Californian dessert crab raised by Albert Etter, exceptional for carrying very high sugar and very high acid at the same time, and now one of the most sought-after cider cultivars in North America.
Braeburn
A New Zealand chance seedling found near Motueka in the 1950s, sharper and denser than most modern dessert apples, and one of the better commercial cultivars available to a cider blender.
Cortland
A 1898 Geneva cross of Ben Davis and McIntosh, released in 1915, whose flesh browns unusually slowly — a property that made it a salad apple and makes its juice unusually resistant to oxidative browning.
Roxbury Russet
Generally reckoned the oldest apple cultivar raised in North America — a Massachusetts russet from the seventeenth century, pressed for cider for as long as it has existed.
Browns Apple
The standard Devon sharp: a bright red, heavy-cropping, high-acid apple with almost no tannin, and the fruit most English blends reach for when they need lift.
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
- Can you make cider from cox apples — Yes, as an aromatic sharp in a blend. Cox carries about 0.60 per cent acid and only 0.07 per cent tannin on the Long Ashton figures, so it brings acid and aroma and no structure at all.
- What is juice blending
- How is supermarket cider made
- Is single variety cider better than a blend — Neither is inherently better and CiderHQ does not rank them. A single varietal shows one cultivar’s character and depends entirely on that fruit being balanced; a blend is how most makers reach balance deliberately.
- 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.
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.
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.
NIAB (incorporating East Malling Research)
NIAB · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
East Malling developed the M-series apple rootstocks that determine tree size in essentially every modern orchard, cider orchards included. The authority CiderHQ uses for rootstock behaviour.
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.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.