Cider apple
Le Bret
A French bittersweet naturalised in Somerset orchards, giving firm tannin from a late, hard fruit and rarely grown outside the West Country.
Also written Lebret, Le Bret Apple.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Tannin and structure, Late season
- Origin
- France, probably Normandy or Brittany
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 4
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
- Evidence
- Analysed in 2 sources, watched at 1 trial site
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 full bittersweet under the English scheme; its placement in the French families is not recorded here.
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 drink will be.
| Axis | Typical | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Acid | Very low | |
| Tannin | Firm | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Marked | |
| Astringency | Drying | |
| Aroma | Neutral | |
| Body | Full |
Long Ashton acid and tannin ranges for English-grown fruit.
Contributes firm, bitter tannin and length, and is used in small proportion.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Le Bret, 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.
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 | 70 mm (62–79) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Fruit firmness | 52.2 N (45.6–58.8) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Fruit weight | 163 g (130–197) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Starch pattern index | 8.0 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brix | 15.9 °Bx (15.7–16.2) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Fructose | 27.2 g/L (24.9–29.5)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Glucose | 12.8 g/L (7.8–17.8)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| pH | 4.78 pH (3.83–5.73)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Sorbitol | 13.4 g/L (8.1–18.7)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Sucrose | 10.5 g/L (3.5–17.5)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Titratable acidity | 1.6 g/L | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Total acid | 0.120–0.220 % w/v | Long Ashton, Somerset, England | Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985Historic analysis | National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol |
| Total phenolics | 920.0 mg/L (750.0–1090.0) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Total tannin | 0.240–0.340 % w/v | Long Ashton, Somerset, England | Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985Historic analysis | National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol |
How these were measured
- Titration of pressed juice, reported as malic acid
- 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 8.1 with sodium hydroxide, reported as malic acid equivalents. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- The starting pH recorded by the autotitrator before titration, on juice stored frozen at −80 °C and thawed; the source describes no separate pH measurement. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Folin–Ciocalteu assay against gallic acid standards, published in grams per litre of gallic acid equivalent and stored here as milligrams per litre by exact conversion. The source converts these figures to Löwenthal tannic acid equivalents, by a laboratory factor of 1.6, only to sort its accessions into classes; the figure here is the unconverted one.
- 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.
- Ph: Not used in any distribution, ranking or comparison. A fresh apple juice at pH 4.78 is above anything recorded for apple juice in the other programmes on this site, which reach 4.7 at most. The programme’s acidity and pH agree with each other — its low-acid fruit reads high — so the column may be elevated rather than wrong. It is the starting reading of an autotitrator on juice that had been frozen and thawed, and it is transcribed exactly from the thesis; figures above 4.7 are shown as published and left out of comparisons.
- Glucose, fructose, sucrose and sorbitol: Not used in any distribution, ranking or comparison. This programme’s enzyme-assayed sugars do not reconcile with its own refractometer readings across the collection — for many varieties the sugars add up to more than the Brix reading allows. The figures were checked against the thesis’s own tables in October 2026 and are transcribed exactly: the disagreement is in the published source, which does not say which reading is wrong. Proportions between glucose, fructose and sucrose, which came from one assay, are still used in summary.
- English-grown fruit at one Somerset site.
- A range rather than a value; the per-cultivar tables are unverified.
- 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.
- The published standard deviation on this reading equals or exceeds the mean, so the interval it describes runs below zero. It is not reproduced; the mean is.
- A Folin–Ciocalteu figure counts everything that reduces the reagent, not tannin alone, and is not interchangeable with a Löwenthal permanganate figure for the same juice. Compare this reading with other Folin–Ciocalteu readings in gallic acid equivalents.
Where it sits among the varieties each programme measured
| Programme | Property | Le Bret | Programme median | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Long Ashton Research Station cider fruit analyses | Total acid | 0.17 % w/v | 0.20 % w/v | Above 1, level with 10, below 24 of the other 35: lowest quarter |
| Long Ashton Research Station cider fruit analyses | Total tannin | 0.29 % w/v | 0.24 % w/v | Above 25, level with 2, below 7 of the other 34: highest quarter |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Titratable acidity as malic | 1.6 g/L | 4.1 g/L | Above 5, level with 1, below 40 of the other 46: lowest quarter |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Total phenolics | 920 mg/L | 980 mg/L | Above 16, level with 3, below 27 of the other 46: lower middle |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Brix | 15.9 °Bx | 12.5 °Bx | Above 43 and below 3 of the other 46: highest quarter |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Fruit diameter | 70.0 mm | 65.0 mm | Above 30, level with 1, below 15 of the other 46: upper middle |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Fruit weight | 163 g | 124 g | Above 32 and below 14 of the other 46: upper middle |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Fruit firmness | 52.2 N | 58.9 N | Above 15 and below 29 of the other 44: lower middle |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Starch pattern index | 8.0 SPI | 8.0 SPI | Above 20, level with 24, below 0 of the other 44: upper middle |
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.
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 589690, held as “Le Bret”
- Published standard deviation on titratable acidity, published as mean 1.6 g/L, standard deviation 1.7 g/L. The deviation equals or exceeds the mean, so the interval it describes runs below zero. Something in the replicates for this accession went wrong, and CiderHQ publishes the mean without pretending to know the spread.
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 8.1 as malic acid, pH as the autotitrator’s starting reading on juice that had been frozen, total phenolics by Folin–Ciocalteu assay as gallic acid equivalent, and glucose, fructose, sucrose and sorbitol by enzymatic assay.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Late
- Flowering
- Pollination group 4
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
Late October into November.
Late-flowering, in line with the other naturalised Normans.
106 other cultivars on this site with a recorded group could pollinate it — diploids flowering in group 4 or a group either side. See which, with their class and harvest window.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Very low acid
- Firm bitter tannin
- Modest sugar
How it is used
- A tannin component of Somerset blends
- One of the naturalised French cultivars of West Country orchards
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Too bitter and too low in acid to work alone.
About Le Bret
Le Bret is one of the French cultivars that came into English orchards in the wave of Norman introductions and then quietly stayed. It is a hard, late bittersweet with firm and distinctly bitter tannin, used in the same small proportions as Chisel Jersey and for the same purpose: to give a blend a defined finish.
Its position is faintly odd. The name is French and the fruit is grown almost entirely in Somerset, so its practical documentation is English while its origin is not. This record classifies it under the Long Ashton scheme because that is where the evidence is, and does not guess at where the French families would put it.
Like the rest of the naturalised French group it suffers from unreliable labelling in old plantings, and identifications from a farm’s own records should be treated cautiously.
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
The name is French and the fruit came to England with the Norman introductions, but the specific French origin is not documented and the cultivar is now much better known in Somerset than in France.
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.
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.
Fréquin Rouge
A small, hard, deeply tannic Norman bitter apple that gives a French blend its grip, and the most widely planted member of a whole family of local Fréquins that are not all the same fruit.
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.
Médaille d’Or
A small, russeted Norman bittersweet with exceptionally high tannin and sugar, famous in England out of all proportion to how much of it anyone has ever managed to grow.
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
- 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.
- What is somerset cider
- What is normandy cider
- What is tannin balancing
- 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.
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.