Cider apple
Enterprise
A 1993 release from the same disease-resistance programme as Liberty and GoldRush, resistant to scab, blight and rust together, and used in cider blends for firm acid and unusually thick skin phenolics.
Also written Enterprise, Coop 30.
- Classification
- Not classified under any recorded system
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Late season
- Origin
- The Purdue–Rutgers–Illinois co-operative apple breeding programme, released through the University of Illinois
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
How it is classified
No classification scheme has been recorded for Enterprise. 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 | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Description of a thick-skinned, firmly acid, moderately spicy apple. No cultivar-specific juice analysis is held in CiderHQ’s register. 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.
Firm, sharp and slightly spicy, with a thick, tough skin that carries more phenolic character than the flesh does.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Enterprise, 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.
Brix13.0 °Bx
Winchester, Virginia, USA, 2012–2013 · Refractometer on pressed juice. · Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Refractometric sugar reading. Measured in degrees brix.
pH3.76 pH
Winchester, Virginia, USA, 2012–2013 · Meter on pressed juice. · Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Acid strength, which governs microbial risk and sulphite effectiveness. Measured in ph.
Titratable acidity9.3 g/L
Winchester, Virginia, USA, 2012–2013 · Titration, reported as malic acid. Published to two decimal places and shown at the one the site displays. · Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Acid measured by neutralisation — the quantity of acid, not its strength. Measured in grams per litre.
Total phenolics398.0 mg/L
Winchester, Virginia, USA, 2012–2013 · Folin–Ciocalteu, reported as gallic acid equivalents. · Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
A Folin–Ciocalteu figure in gallic acid equivalents. It is not interchangeable with a Löwenthal permanganate “tannin” figure: the two assays respond to different things and can differ by a factor of two on the same juice.
All phenolic compounds together, usually reported as gallic acid equivalents. Measured in milligrams 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.
Virginia cultivar polyphenol characterisation
Winchester, in the northern Shenandoah Valley, Virginia · 2012–2013 · Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Humid subtropical shading into continental, with hot summers — warm enough that acid falls faster through the ripening period than it does in a maritime autumn, which is part of why the titratable acidities here run lower than English figures for comparable fruit.
- Held as
- Listed as “Enterprise”
Soluble solids by refractometer, pH by meter, titratable acidity by titration as malic acid, total polyphenols by Folin–Ciocalteu as gallic acid equivalents. Twenty cultivars, one site.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Late
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Apple scab | low | — |
| Fire blight | low | Resistant to all three of the major eastern diseases, which is the cultivar’s distinguishing feature. |
| Cedar apple rust | low | — |
Juice and pressing
- Firm acid.
- A little more skin phenolic than most modern dessert apples, though nothing approaching a bittersweet.
- Moderate sugar and good juice yield.
How it is used
- A low-spray commercial and home-orchard apple in the eastern United States.
- A cider blending component where a grower needs a disease-resistant tree.
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Sound and firm but aromatically restrained; it is used as a component rather than bottled alone.
About Enterprise
Enterprise is the most thoroughly disease-resistant cultivar in this file. It carries resistance to apple scab, fire blight and cedar apple rust simultaneously, which in the humid eastern United States is close to the whole of what an orchard planner is trying to achieve. That is why it is planted, and its cider use follows from being available rather than from being sought.
The juice is decent and unremarkable: firm acid, moderate sugar, a slightly spiced character, and rather more skin phenolic than a typical modern dessert apple — which is worth noting only because the baseline is so low. A maker milling Enterprise gets a sound sharp component and no structure.
The record carries no measurement, and that is deliberate. Enterprise has not been the subject of published cider juice analysis in CiderHQ’s register, and inventing a figure for a cultivar simply because figures exist for its neighbours would defeat the purpose of recording measurements with their context at all.
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.
Parentage · a recorded cross
A complex multi-generation cross within the co-operative programme, carrying Vf scab resistance from Malus floribunda. None of its immediate parents has a CiderHQ record. Recorded as a cross by the breeding programme that made it, which is strong evidence about what was intended and weaker evidence about which pollen took; no genotyping study CiderHQ has read confirms it.
The breeding programme recorded making this cross. Strong evidence about what was intended; weaker evidence about which pollen actually took, which only genotyping settles.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Coop 30 | Trade name | The co-operative programme’s selection number. |
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.
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
- Is goldrush good for cider — It is one of the modern scab-resistant cultivars American cider makers use for acid and sugar together. A Virginia study measured 15.0 degrees Brix, pH 3.49, 11.1 g/L acid and 359 mg/L polyphenols.
- What is modern american cider like
- Why was cider so important in new england — Apples grew where grapes and barley struggled, water was often unsafe, and every farm could press. Cider was the ordinary drink of colonial New England until temperance and then industrial brewing displaced it.
- What is new york cider like
- Is cider made in the southern united states — In the mountains. Southern Appalachian elevation makes apple growing possible at a latitude that otherwise could not support it, and North Carolina holds much of the surviving southern heritage apple repertoire.
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.
Cornell Cider Research and Extension programme
Cornell University, School of Integrative Plant Science · university · passage verified 2026-08-24
Runs cultivar trials in New York State and publishes juice chemistry for European cider varieties grown in a North American climate — the single most useful counterweight to treating English figures as universal.
GRIN-Global germplasm database — Malus and Pyrus
United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.