Cider apple
Jonagold
A 1943 Geneva cross of Golden Delicious and Jonathan, triploid and large-fruited, which became a major European as well as North American crop and gives a juice with good sugar and useful acid.
Also written Jonagold, Jonagored.
- Classification
- Not classified under any recorded system
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Sugar and body, Bulk juice, Acid lift
- Origin
- New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Very vigorous — a large tree that takes years to settle to cropping
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
No classification scheme has been recorded for Jonagold. 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 | Negligible | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | None | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
WSU acid and Brix figures from western Washington fruit, with the remaining axes from description.
Rich and honeyed from its Golden Delicious side with a sharper, more aromatic edge from Jonathan; a fuller juice than most dessert fruit.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Jonagold, 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.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brix2 readings, spanning 12.4–13.5 °Bx | 12.0–15.0 °Bx | Mount Vernon, Washington State | 2010sModern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 12.4 °Bx | Winchester, Virginia, USA | 2012–2013Modern analysis | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry | |
| pH | 3.92 pH | Winchester, Virginia, USA | 2012–2013Modern analysis | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry |
| Titratable acidity | 4.2 g/L | Winchester, Virginia, USA | 2012–2013Modern analysis | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry |
| Total acid | 0.450–0.700 % w/v | Mount Vernon, Washington State | 2010sModern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Total phenolics | 301.0 mg/L | Winchester, Virginia, USA | 2012–2013Modern analysis | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry |
One property here has 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
- 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.
- Reported as malic acid from maritime western Washington. Jonagold grown in the dry irrigated interior of the state ripens differently and would not be expected to give the same figure.
- Refractometric, calibrated on sucrose. Good for a dessert apple and well below the russets and crabs in this file.
- 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.
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 “Jonagold”
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
- triploid
- Vigour
- Very vigorous — a large tree that takes years to settle to cropping
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Good
Triploid, so it needs two compatible diploid pollinators and gives nothing back.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Apple scab | high | — |
| Fire blight | moderate | — |
| Bitter pit | moderate | A calcium disorder that afflicts large-fruited cultivars and has no effect on juice quality. |
Juice and pressing
- Better sugar than most dessert apples, without approaching a russet.
- Moderate acid, usually around or a little above the sharp threshold.
- No tannin.
- High juice yield from very large fruit.
How it is used
- A major commercial dessert apple in North America and, still more, in northern Europe.
- Pressed as culls in large volume on both continents.
- A blending component giving gravity and moderate acid.
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
Better than most dessert fruit as a soloist because the sugar gives it body and the Jonathan side gives it some lift. It still has no tannin and no length.
About Jonagold
Jonagold is what happens when a breeding programme crosses its two most useful parents. Golden Delicious supplies sugar, size and a honeyed richness; Jonathan supplies acid and an aromatic lift; the result is a large triploid apple that became a mainstay in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands as much as in New York and Washington.
As pressing fruit it is one of the better dessert apples. The sugar is genuinely good by dessert-apple standards, the acid usually clears the sharp threshold, and the juice has more body than a Gala or a Red Delicious. None of that makes it cider fruit in the West Country sense — there is no tannin whatever — but a blend built on Jonagold starts from a better place than one built on Rome or York.
The measurements above are from maritime western Washington, and the caveat about the interior of the state is not a formality. Washington grows apples in two utterly different climates: a wet, cool maritime strip west of the Cascades and a hot, dry, irrigated interior east of them. The same cultivar in those two places gives different juice, and a figure without a site attached would be worse than no figure 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
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Jonagored | Trade name | A redder sport marketed under its own name, particularly in Europe; pressed as the same fruit. |
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.
Baldwin
The dominant New England apple of the nineteenth century until a single catastrophic winter destroyed the orchards; a firm, moderately sharp keeper still used in northeastern cider blends.
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.
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.
Bramley’s Seedling
England’s dominant cooking apple, a triploid of very high acid and negligible tannin, and by volume one of the most important fruits in modern British cider.
Browns Apple
The standard Devon sharp: a bright red, heavy-cropping, high-acid apple with almost no tannin, and the fruit most English blends reach for when they need lift.
Douce Moën
The workhorse of Breton cider orchards: a large, pale, very low-acid bittersweet that crops heavily, presses generously, and carries more Breton cider than any other single cultivar.
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.
- 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
- 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.
- What is modern american cider like
- Is jonathan apple good for cider — It is used as a sharp. A late-1970s Geneva analysis of finished cider gave 0.58 per cent acid and pH 3.41 on 13.0 degrees Brix — enough acid to be useful in a blend, and no tannin to speak of.
- Is michigan a cider state — A large one, built on a different foundation from the others. Lake-moderated shorelines support apple growing at scale, but the crop is dessert and processing fruit, so Michigan cider starts from culinary apples rather than from a bittersweet 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.
Washington State University cider research programme
Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center · university · passage verified 2026-08-24
The single most useful open cider dataset CiderHQ has found. The programme’s cultivar performance database gives juice chemistry, orchard behaviour, bloom and harvest timing and cider-maker tasting notes for 73 cultivars grown at one maritime site over fifteen years, and — unusually — publishes its classification thresholds alongside its figures, so the classification can be checked rather than taken on trust. It also states outright that its results diverge from the English ones. Read in full on 2026-08-24 and transcribed into `data/trials/wsu-mount-vernon.ts`; four published figures were found to be impossible and are withheld there with their reasons.
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.