Cider apple
Gennet Moyle
A very old English dual-purpose apple recorded since the sixteenth century, used for cooking and for cider in the Three Counties and now rare.
Also written Genet Moyle, Jennet Moyle, Gennett Moyle, Ginnie Moyle.
- Classification
- Sharp — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Early (September)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Early season
- Origin
- England, associated with the west and the Welsh border
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
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, in keeping with its culinary character. Placed on description; no verified analysis is attached.
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 | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Description of a culinary sharp used in cider. No cider analysis attaches to this cultivar.
Supplies acid to a Three Counties blend and cooks to a purée, which is what it was mainly grown for.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Gennet Moyle, 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 Gennet Moyle. 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
- Early
- Flowering
- triploid
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
September. An early cooker, used fresh rather than stored.
An early apple that does not store.
Recorded as a triploid, which means it needs two other cultivars nearby to set a crop and is itself a poor pollinator. No pollination group number is recorded here.
A triploid carries three sets of chromosomes rather than two, and its pollen is effectively sterile. It cannot pollinate another tree and needs two compatible pollinators of its own, which is a real constraint on how an orchard containing it has to be planted.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Moderate to high acid
- Low tannin
How it is used
- A cooking apple of the western counties and the Welsh border
- Pressed for cider as part of a mixed blend
- One of the small number of English apple names recorded before 1600
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
A culinary apple, and thin fermented alone.
About Gennet Moyle
Gennet Moyle is one of a handful of English apple names that can be traced to the sixteenth century, and it has been spelled about eight different ways since. It was a cooking apple of the western counties and the border, early-ripening and quick to break down, and it went into cider because everything went into cider.
Its triploid habit matters practically. A triploid produces sterile pollen, so it cannot fertilise its neighbours and needs two other compatible cultivars in the orchard to set its own crop. In a mixed old orchard that was rarely a problem; in a modern block planting it is a genuine constraint, and it is one reason triploids have fallen out of commercial favour.
Whether the trees now grown under the name are the sixteenth-century fruit is unresolved and probably unresolvable. A name that old attached to a vegetatively propagated crop has had four hundred years in which to drift, and the honest position is that the name is continuous and the identity is not demonstrated.
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
One of the oldest English apple names still attached to a growing cultivar. Whether trees now grown under the name descend from the sixteenth-century fruit is not established, and the name’s meaning is disputed.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Genet Moyle | Historic spelling | One of many spellings; the name has never been stabilised. |
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.
Breakwell’s Seedling
An early Monmouthshire cider apple raised in the early twentieth century, sharp with a little tannin, and widely grown on both sides of the border.
Discovery
A very early red dessert apple raised in Essex, used by cidermakers to start the season with something aromatic and sharp.
Dolgo Crab
An extremely hardy Russian-derived crab introduced to the northern plains around 1900, very high in acid and rich in anthocyanin, used across northern North America for acid, colour and pollination.
Katy
A Swedish-raised dessert apple widely grown in Britain and one of the most used dessert cultivars in modern British single-varietal cider.
Cheddar Cross
A very early sharp raised at Long Ashton, giving acid at the start of the season when little else is ready.
Grenadier
An early English culinary apple of high acid, used by cidermakers to bring sharpness to the first pressings of the season.
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.
- Do cider apple trees need another variety to pollinate them — Almost always. Most apples are self-incompatible, and several important cider varieties are triploid, which means they produce poor pollen and need two compatible partners rather than one.
- How do you blend cider
- What are the three counties in cider — Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire — the block of country where England’s cider and, above all, its perry have historically concentrated.
- What is herefordshire cider
- Where are perry pears grown
- What is worcestershire 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.
Three Counties Cider and Perry Association
TCCPA · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.