Cider apple
Improved Dove
A selected form of the Devon bittersweet Dove, giving better cropping and cleaner fruit than the original while keeping its soft, full tannin.
Also written Improved Dove Apple.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Bittersweet base, Sugar and body, Tannin and structure
- Origin
- Devon
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Moderate
How it is classified
Long Ashton classification
Bittersweet
Low acid, high tannin. The class that has no real equivalent in dessert fruit and that defines West Country cider.
Basis: Below about 0.45% w/v acid and above about 0.2% w/v tannin.
A medium bittersweet with soft tannin.
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 | Very low | |
| Tannin | Firm | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | Moderate | |
| Astringency | Noticeable | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Full |
Long Ashton acid and tannin ranges, with the caveat that the figures may not distinguish this selection from its parent.
Contributes soft, rounded tannin and good body, in the same register as Dabinett.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Improved Dove, 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.
Total acid0.120–0.220 % w/v
Long Ashton, Somerset, England, Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985 · Titration of pressed juice, reported as malic acid · National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol
Historic single-site fruit. Figures attributed to Dove and to Improved Dove are not always distinguished in the literature.
How much acid the juice contains, conventionally reported as malic acid. Measured in percent weight per volume.
Total tannin0.200–0.300 % w/v
Long Ashton, Somerset, England, Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985 · National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol
A range rather than a value, and one that may include analyses of the unimproved Dove.
The phenolic fraction responsible for bitterness and astringency. Measured in percent weight per volume.
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.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Moderate
October.
The improvement being claimed is chiefly in cropping regularity, and by report it is real.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Low acid
- Soft, full tannin
- Good sugar
How it is used
- A bittersweet component of Devon blends
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Rarely bottled alone; soft and full, with no acid to carry it.
About Improved Dove
Improved Dove is one of a small number of English cider apples that exist because someone looked at a serviceable local fruit and picked a better tree out of it. The original Dove is a Devon bittersweet with soft tannin and irregular cropping; the improvement is understood to be in the cropping rather than in the juice.
In a blend it does very much what Dabinett does — soft tannin, good sugar, real body, no acid — and it is used the same way. Where a Devon orchard has both, they are effectively interchangeable in the tank.
The analytical record is muddled by the naming. Figures published for "Dove" may or may not be for this selection, and the two have been listed together, separately, and as synonyms in different places. Any number attached to either should be read as covering the pair.
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
A selection from Devon Dove material. Who made the selection and when is not recorded; "Improved" is a nursery designation rather than a documented event.
Parentage · not established
Understood as a selection or sport from Dove rather than a seedling of it. The relationship is universally asserted and has not been tested genetically.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Dove | Disputed identity | The unimproved original is a distinct cultivar and is recorded separately. Old orchard lists using "Dove" alone cannot be assigned to one or the other. |
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.
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.
Harry Masters’ Jersey
A medium bittersweet from the Yarlington district, valued for tannin that is full without being harsh, and among the more reliable croppers in a class that is generally unreliable.
Reine des Pommes
A dark red Norman bittersweet with a grand name and a solid reputation, imported into England alongside Michelin and Médaille d’Or and analysed there as a bittersweet of some quality.
Somerset Redstreak
A mild bittersweet planted at very large scale in the late twentieth century for its heavy, regular cropping on bush trees, and a fruit whose commercial importance exceeds its character.
Yarlington Mill
A vigorous Somerset bittersweet, conical and red-striped, giving a cider with more aromatic lift than most of its class and a reputation for fruitiness that the tannin figures do not explain.
Chisel Jersey
A hard, high-tannin Somerset bittersweet used in small proportion for structure, and one of the fruit most often reached for when a blend needs backbone rather than bulk.
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.
- What is dabinett — The most widely planted English cider apple: a late bittersweet with soft, full tannin that ferments into a cider needing very little added to it. Long Ashton measured it at 0.18 per cent acid and 0.29 per cent tannin.
- How do you blend cider
- What is a traditional west country cider blend — Predominantly bittersweet fruit for body and tannin, with a proportion of sharp fruit for acidity and sometimes a smaller share of bittersharps for both. The exact composition varied by farm and by what was in the orchard.
- 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.
- Is dorset a cider county — On the eastern edge of one. Dorset carried a working farm cider tradition rather than a commercial industry, and its cultivars — Buttery Door, Melcombe Horsey and others — are a distinct local group rather than West Country imports.
- What is devon 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.
Long Ashton Research Station cider fruit analyses
National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol · research institute · registered as competent for this subject · covers 1903–2003
The foundational body of cider-fruit science in English. Long Ashton produced the acid-and-tannin classification that divides cider apples into sweet, sharp, bittersweet and bittersharp, and analysed hundreds of cultivars grown at its Somerset site. Its figures are historic measurements of specific fruit at a specific place, not universal constants — a distinction CiderHQ preserves in every measurement record that cites it.
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.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.