Cider apple
Harrison
The cider apple of eighteenth-century New Jersey, believed extinct for most of the twentieth century and refound in the 1970s; small, russeted, very high in sugar and the nearest thing North America has to a vintage cultivar of its own.
Also written Harrison’s, Harrisontown.
- Classification
- Not classified under any recorded system
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Established as a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Sugar and body, Vintage quality, Tannin and structure
- Origin
- Essex County, New Jersey, in the neighbourhood of Newark
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
No classification scheme has been recorded for Harrison. 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 | Moderate | |
| Sugar | Very high | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Pronounced | |
| Body | Full |
Cornell trial gravities at Geneva plus consistent modern maker description of the fermented juice. The tannin band is wide because Harrison sits between the English classes rather than inside one.
Dense, faintly nutty juice that ferments to a full-bodied cider with a dry finish and a soft rather than gripping tannin.
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.
- Apple skin — The dry, faintly waxy and slightly bitter aroma of the fruit’s surface rather than its flesh, carried by cuticular waxes, hexyl esters and skin-concentrated phenolics.
- Fresh-cut apple — The smell of a cut apple surface, produced within seconds of the fruit tissue being broken by six-carbon aldehydes released from membrane fats.
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 diameter2 readings, spanning 57–60 mm | 60 mm | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 57 mm (54–61) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit | |
| Fruit firmness | 114.1 N (101.5–126.8) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Fruit weight | 91 g (74–109) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Juice yield | 487 L/t | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Starch pattern index | 7.0 SPI | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brix3 readings, spanning 14.6–16.1 °Bx | 14.6 °Bx | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 15.7 °Bx (14.0–17.3) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit | |
| 16.1 °Bx | Winchester, Virginia, USA | 2012–2013Modern analysis | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry | |
| pH3 readings, spanning 3.46–3.72 pH | 3.46 pH | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 3.72 pH (3.69–3.75) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit | |
| 3.51 pH | Winchester, Virginia, USA | 2012–2013Modern analysis | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry | |
| Specific gravity2 readings, spanning 1.061–1.065 SG | 1.055–1.075 SG | Geneva, New York State | 2010sModern analysis | Cornell University, School of Integrative Plant Science |
| 1.061 SG | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center | |
| Titratable acidity2 readings, spanning 4.4–11.1 g/L | 4.4 g/L (3.8–5.0) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| 11.1 g/L | Winchester, Virginia, USA | 2012–2013Modern analysis | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry | |
| Total phenolics2 readings, spanning 926.0–960.0 mg/L | 960.0 mg/L (710.0–1210.0) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| 926.0 mg/L | Winchester, Virginia, USA | 2012–2013Modern analysis | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry | |
| Fructose | 93.5 g/L (91.1–95.9) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Glucose | 35.6 g/L (30.3–40.9) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Sorbitol | 25.2 g/L (21.8–28.6) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Sucrose | 40.1 g/L (34.8–45.4) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Total acid | 0.640 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Total tannin | 0.100 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
6 properties here have been measured more than once. The readings are shown as they were taken and are deliberately not averaged — climate, season, ripeness at picking, the age of the tree and the analytical method all move these numbers, and a single figure would hide every one of them. Where a spread is given below a property, it is the distance between separate studies, not the variation within any one of them.
How these were measured
- Permanganate titration against indigo carmine, reported as tannic acid equivalent
- Titration, reported as malic acid equivalent
- Published as 2.36 inches; converted at 25.4 mm to the inch
- Juice pressed from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Published as 221 mL/lb; converted at 2.204623 lb to the kilogram
- Mean of the fruit sampled per accession; where a bracket is shown it is one standard deviation either side of the mean, not the observed range. Published to two decimal places and shown at the precision CiderHQ displays for the unit.
- Mean of the fruit sampled per accession; where a bracket is shown it is one standard deviation either side of the mean, not the observed range.
- Cornell generic starch–iodine chart, 1–8, where 1 is no hydrolysis and 8 is complete. Mean of replicate fruit; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of it.
- Penetrometer, mean of replicate fruit; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Refractometer on pressed juice. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Titration to pH 8.2 with sodium hydroxide, reported as malic acid equivalents. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Meter on pressed juice before fermentation. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Löwenthal permanganate titration, reported by the source as grams per litre of tannic acid equivalent and stored here as milligrams per litre by exact conversion so that it sits in one column with the Folin–Ciocalteu figures the site also holds. The two methods do not measure the same thing and are not interchangeable.
- Enzymatic assay (Megazyme). Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- D-sorbitol/xylitol assay kit (Megazyme), sorbitol dehydrogenase method. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Refractometer on pressed juice.
- Meter on pressed juice.
- Titration, reported as malic acid. Published to two decimal places and shown at the one the site displays.
- Folin–Ciocalteu, reported as gallic acid equivalents.
- A multi-season range from trial fruit in western New York, not a constant. Harrison is unusually responsive to a long warm autumn and the upper part of this range belongs to seasons that supplied one.
- A chart position, not a quantity. Almost every accession here scored at or near 8, which says the fruit was picked at or past full starch conversion rather than that the cultivars are alike.
- One harvest at one site. Soluble solids move several degrees between seasons and with crop load.
- A permanganate figure and a Folin–Ciocalteu figure for the same juice can differ by a factor of two. Compare this reading with other permanganate readings, not with a Folin one.
- 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.
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
- 16 May
- Harvest
- 9 October
- Bloom density
- 3.4 of 5
- Productivity
- 2.3 of 5
- Growth habit
- Upright
- Bearing
- Tip Bearing
- Alternate bearing
- Semi alternate
- Blind wood
- 2 of 5
- Rootstocks
- MM.106
Filed here as sharp.
Color gold, moderately sharp. Well balanced with delicate flavors & aromas. Soft, rounded mouth feel and good fruit character with a peachy, smoky, mildly astringent finish. This cider tends to not ferment to complete dryness. A wonderful single varietal or blender.
Recorded by the programme from professional cidermakers in the region. One panel, one place, one set of seasons — a description of these ciders rather than of the cultivar everywhere.
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.
USDA-PGRU Malus germplasm characterisation
USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, in the Finger Lakes region of western New York State · 2017 · Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Humid continental, with cold winters and warm summers moderated by the Finger Lakes — a sharper seasonal swing than any of the European cider regions whose fruit the collection holds, and warm enough in late summer to bring acid down faster than a maritime autumn does.
- Held as
- PI 681628, held as “Harrison”
One harvest season. Fruit assessed for weight, diameter, starch pattern index on the Cornell 1–8 chart and flesh firmness by penetrometer; juice pressed and measured for soluble solids by refractometer, titratable acidity by titration to pH 8.2 as malic acid, pH by meter, total phenolics by Löwenthal permanganate titration as tannic acid equivalent, and glucose, fructose, sucrose and sorbitol by enzymatic assay.
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 “Harrison”
The highest phenolic figure in the study by a wide margin — 926 mg/L against a next-highest of 415 — and the only cultivar in it with a documented cider history. It is the clearest single number CiderHQ holds for why a cider apple is a different object from a dessert apple.
Recorded by the programme from professional cidermakers in the region. One panel, one place, one set of seasons — a description of these ciders rather than of the cultivar everywhere.
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
- Good
Picked late in the New Jersey and Hudson Valley season, and generally improved by a fortnight in store before milling.
Reported as a steady cropper once established, with small fruit and a heavy set.
Small, dense, tough-skinned fruit that holds for weeks without breaking down.
Mid-season bloom. No national pollination group is assigned to it in North America, where the English group numbering is not used.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Fire blight | moderate | A first-order orchard consideration in the mid-Atlantic and the Hudson Valley, and one that barely registers in English cider-fruit description. |
| Apple scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Very high sugar for a North American apple, which is the property the eighteenth-century trade valued.
- Moderate acid — enough to keep a ferment safe, not enough to dominate the palate.
- Enough phenolic material to give body and a dry finish without the frank bitterness of a West Country bittersweet.
- Small fruit and low juice yield per tonne, which is part of why it was abandoned once the market for cider collapsed.
How it is used
- Pressed as the principal fruit of the Newark cider and cider-spirit trade.
- Blended with Campfield in the proportion the New Jersey growers favoured.
- Made as a single-varietal cider by modern revival producers.
On its own
Established as a single-varietal cider
Made single-varietal by a number of producers since the rediscovery, and it holds together — the sugar carries the body and the phenolics carry the finish. It is the North American cultivar most often cited to argue that the continent had vintage fruit of its own.
About Harrison
Newark in the late eighteenth century had a cider trade with a reputation, and Harrison was the fruit that made it. Contemporary agricultural writing describes a small, yellow, heavily russeted apple with a dense juice, pressed for a cider that fetched a price and for a spirit distilled from it. That is a very unusual thing to be able to say about an American apple: almost every other cultivar in this file was selected to eat, to cook or to keep, and found its way into a press afterwards. Harrison appears to have been valued for pressing from the beginning.
It then vanished. The Newark orchards went to housing and industry, the temperance movement removed the market, Prohibition finished it, and by the middle of the twentieth century Harrison was written about in the past tense. Its recovery in the 1970s from surviving trees, and the subsequent propagation of that material through collections and nurseries, is the founding story of the modern American heritage-cider movement — not because Harrison is the only cultivar that came through, but because it is the one whose loss and return can be told as a single narrative.
What it actually does in a press is less romantic and more useful. The juice is high in sugar, moderate in acid and carries enough phenolic material to leave a dry, slightly grippy finish without tasting bitter. It does not behave like an English bittersweet, and forcing it into the Long Ashton scheme misrepresents it: it sits between the classes, which is why this record leaves the classification array empty rather than picking the nearest box. Cornell has published gravities from its New York trial plantings, and those are recorded above with the site attached.
The practical limits are worth stating alongside the history. The fruit is small, the juice yield per tonne is modest, and fire blight is a real risk across the mid-Atlantic in a way that no English cider-fruit description would think to mention. A grower planting Harrison today is accepting a lower-yielding tree in exchange for a juice that does something no readily available dessert apple can do.
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 · documented
The association with Newark and its cider trade is carried by contemporary agricultural writing rather than by a single founding document, so the place is well evidenced and the exact date of raising is not.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Harrison of Essex County | Regional name | New Jersey. Used in nineteenth-century New Jersey nursery listings to distinguish the cider fruit from other apples of the same surname. |
| Long Stem | Disputed identity | Applied to Harrison in some accounts and to other New Jersey apples in others; the identification is not settled. |
Why it matters
- The clearest case of a genuinely American cider cultivar, bred or selected for pressing rather than eating.
- Its near-extinction and rediscovery is the standard illustration of what Prohibition and orchard clearance did to American cider fruit.
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.
Dabinett
The most widely planted English cider apple: a small, late-ripening bittersweet whose soft, full tannin ferments into a cider that needs almost nothing added to it.
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.
Kingston Black
The most celebrated English single-varietal cider apple: a small dark-red bittersharp carrying acid and tannin in one fruit, and a tree difficult enough that its reputation has always outrun its plantings.
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.
Binet Rouge
A small, dark red Pays d’Auge bittersweet with unusually pronounced aroma, held in the Auge in the regard the West Country holds for its vintage fruit.
GoldRush
A scab-resistant Golden Delicious descendant released in 1994, unusually high in both sugar and acid, exceptionally long-keeping, and one of the modern American selections that cider makers actively seek out.
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 are apples pressed for cider — The fruit is first milled to a pulp, then that pulp is squeezed — traditionally in cloth-wrapped layers under a screw or hydraulic ram, and industrially in a belt or bladder press. Whole apples cannot be pressed usefully; they must be broken first.
- How do you blend cider
- What does fresh-cut apple mean in a cider tasting note — The smell of a cut apple surface, produced within seconds of the fruit tissue being broken by six-carbon aldehydes released from membrane fats.
- How long can apples be kept before pressing
- Why does cider smell of apple skin
- 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.
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.
Cider: Making, Using and Enjoying Sweet and Hard Cider
Annie Proulx and Lew Nichols, Storey Communications, 1997; first published as Sweet & Hard Cider by Garden Way, 1980 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library, and the verification changed what CiderHQ knows about it. The work first appeared in 1980 as Sweet & Hard Cider: Making It, Using It, & Enjoying It (Garden Way, Charlotte, Vermont) and was retitled for the 1997 Storey edition the site had registered; nine editions are recorded in total. That matters for a source cited on North American practice, because a passage in the 1980 text and a passage in the 1997 one are not interchangeable and neither is the 2003 revision. Two scans exist in the Internet Archive — sweethardciderma0000prou for the 1980 edition and cidermakingusing0000prou for the 1997 — both access-restricted to the lending library and the print-disabled collection, so neither is openable by retrieval.
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.