Cider apple
Grimes Golden
A spicy, high-sugar West Virginia apple of the early nineteenth century, probably a parent of Golden Delicious, and one of the more aromatic American cultivars available to a blender.
Also written Grimes, Grimes’ Golden Pippin.
- Classification
- Not classified under any recorded system
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Aroma, Sugar and body
- Origin
- Brooke County, in what is now West Virginia
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Moderate
How it is classified
No classification scheme has been recorded for Grimes Golden. 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 | Moderate | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | None | |
| Aroma | Pronounced | |
| Body | Medium |
Long-standing description of a high-sugar, strongly spiced-aromatic apple. No modern juice analysis is registered for it. 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.
Distinctly spicy and rich, with a sweetness that reads as almost honeyed and only moderate acid beneath it.
Aroma
Descriptors associated with this fruit. Each names a character with a known cause, and association is not a promise — what reaches the glass depends on the ferment as much as on the apple.
- Ripe apple — Full orchard-apple aroma from the acetate esters an apple accumulates through ripening and carries into the finished drink.
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.
Measured on the fruit
Measured on the fruit itself, before anything was done to it. These figures hold whatever was later made from the juice.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fruit diameter | 79 mm | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Juice yield | 445 L/t | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
Measured on the juice
Measured on juice as pressed, before fermentation. This is where most cider analysis lives and what the classification schemes are defined on.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brix | 12.2 °Bx | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| pH | 3.45 pH | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Specific gravity | 1.052 SG | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Total acid | 0.610 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Total tannin | 0.070 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
How these were measured
- Permanganate titration against indigo carmine, reported as tannic acid equivalent
- Titration, reported as malic acid equivalent
- Published as 3.11 inches; converted at 25.4 mm to the inch
- Juice pressed from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Published as 202 mL/lb; converted at 2.204623 lb to the kilogram
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.
WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial
Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center, Mount Vernon, Skagit Valley, Washington · 2002–2017 · Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center
Maritime, with cool summers and mild wet winters — the closest North American analogue to the English West Country, and the reason the programme planted European cider fruit here rather than east of the Cascades.
- Mean full bloom
- 24 April
- Harvest
- 14 October
- Bloom density
- 4.6 of 5
- Productivity
- 4.2 of 5
- Growth habit
- Semi Spreading
- Bearing
- Standard
- Alternate bearing
- No
- Blind wood
- 1 of 5
- Rootstocks
- M9
Filed here as sharp.
Juice characteristics measured on 250 mL of pressed juice; juice yield from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Bloom density, productivity and blind wood are the site’s own subjective 1–5 ratings. Figures are means across the seasons each cultivar was in the trial.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Moderate
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Collar rot | high | Notably susceptible on its own roots, and traditionally worked onto a resistant rootstock for that reason. |
| Fire blight | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- High sugar, among the better American gravities outside the russets.
- Moderate acid — not a sharp, and it will not lift a blend.
- A pronounced spiced aroma that survives fermentation.
How it is used
- Pressed for Appalachian and Ohio Valley farm cider.
- A dessert apple with a strong regional following.
- Used by modern makers for aroma and gravity together.
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
Its sugar and its spice give a single-varietal cider something to say, but the moderate acid leaves it soft and it needs a sharp partner more often than not.
About Grimes Golden
Grimes Golden is the American apple that most clearly demonstrates the difference between sugar and sharpness. Its juice is high in sugar and carries a genuinely distinctive spiced aroma, and it is not a sharp apple at all — the acid is moderate and a blend built on it will taste soft. Nineteenth-century Appalachian and Ohio Valley farms pressed it as part of a mixed crop, and modern makers use it deliberately for the two things it does supply.
Its greatest consequence, though, is genetic. Golden Delicious arose in the same corner of West Virginia and is generally reckoned to be its offspring, and Golden Delicious in turn stands behind Gala, Jonagold, Cripps Pink, GoldRush and a long list of others. A very large share of the world’s modern commercial apple crop — and therefore a very large share of the world’s modern cider — descends from a farm apple in Brooke County.
In the orchard it needs care about rootstock, because it is markedly prone to collar rot on its own roots. That is a growing consideration rather than a juice one, but it is the kind of practical detail that decides whether a heritage cultivar is actually plantable, and this file records it for that reason.
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.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Grimes Golden Pippin | Historic spelling | The fuller nineteenth-century form of the name. |
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.
Golden Delicious
A West Virginia chance seedling of about 1890 that became one of the most planted and most bred-from apples in history — high in sugar, low in acid, and by volume one of the largest single inputs to cider worldwide.
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.
Manttoni
A Basque cultivar of good reputation with balanced acid and pronounced aroma, one of the cultivars a *sagardotegi* will name when describing a serious blend.
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 golden delicious used to make cider — Heavily, and by volume it is one of the largest single inputs to cider worldwide. It brings sugar and a genuine honeyed aroma; what it does not bring is acid or tannin, so it is a component rather than a cider.
- Where does a ripe apple aroma in cider come from — Full orchard-apple aroma from the acetate esters an apple accumulates through ripening and carries into the finished drink.
- What rootstock should i use for cider apples — Rootstock sets tree size, how soon it crops and how long it lives. Traditional standard orchards used vigorous or seedling stocks for large, long-lived trees; modern bush orchards use semi-dwarfing stocks that crop early and can be machine-harvested.
- What is american heritage cider
- What is new york cider like
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.
Cider, Hard and Sweet: History, Traditions, and Making Your Own
Ben Watson, The Countryman Press, first edition 1999; third edition 2013 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: first published 1999 by The Countryman Press, with five editions recorded and a 2008 printing scanned by the Internet Archive as ciderhardsweethi0000benw. The scan is access-restricted to the print-disabled collection. The site had registered this without a year; it now carries one, and the first-edition date matters because a general trade book on cider written in 1999 predates almost the whole of the North American cider revival it is sometimes cited about.
GRIN-Global germplasm database — Malus and Pyrus
United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
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.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.