Cider apple
Locard Vert
A hard green Norman sharp that hangs very late and stores through the winter, one of a small family of Locards distinguished mainly by colour.
Also written Locard.
- Classification
- Sharp — French cider apple families
- Harvest
- Very late (November onwards)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Late season
- Origin
- Normandy
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 5
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
How it is classified
French cider apple families
Sharp · Acidulée
High acid with low tannin.
Basis: Tannin below 2 g/L and acidity 3 to 4.5 g/L as H₂SO₄.
Sharp; some Norman sources place the harder strains in the aigre family, and the distinction between the two acid classes is one of degree.
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 | High | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | None | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Light |
French sharp family placement, with the recorded uncertainty about aigre reflected in the acid band.
Very hard and very sharp, with a green, slightly grassy quality that softens with storage.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Locard Vert, 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
CiderHQ holds no sourced juice analysis for Locard Vert. Figures for this cultivar circulate, but they reach the present through compilation rather than through the original tables, and publishing a number we cannot attribute would give it an authority it has not earned. What is known about how the fruit behaves is described above and below.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Very late
- Flowering
- Pollination group 5
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
One of the last apples off the tree in Normandy, and it is normally stored for weeks or months before milling.
Will hold into the spring in a cool shed, which is its main practical virtue.
Juice and pressing
- High malic acid
- Very low tannin
- Acid falls appreciably in store, which changes how much of it a blend needs
How it is used
- Acid correction in late and winter pressings
- Stored fruit for a spring press
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Austere and thin alone.
About Locard Vert
Locard Vert exists to make late cider possible. Norman blends are built on low-acid bittersweets, and a mill still pressing in December needs an acid cultivar that has not gone soft. Locard Vert hangs into November, stores for months without collapsing, and holds enough acid to correct a blend even after time in the shed.
The storage matters analytically as well as practically. Malic acid falls in stored fruit through respiration, so a Locard pressed in March is a materially different ingredient from the same fruit pressed in November — less sharp, softer, and correcting a blend less. A maker who has learned the proportions on freshly picked fruit will over-add on stored fruit, and this is the kind of detail that a bare classification label cannot convey.
Like the Fréquins and the Binets, the Locards are a family rather than a cultivar, with green and white forms recognised locally. CiderHQ keeps them as separate records where French practice does, while noting that the boundary is soft and that trees in old orchards are not reliably assignable.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Locard Blanc | Disputed identity | Normandy. A paler Locard, treated in French practice as a separate cultivar. The Locards are a group and the boundaries between them are not firm. |
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.
Guillevic
A pale green Breton sharp with an unusually distinct aroma, and the only French cider apple with a substantial single-varietal tradition attached to a protected quality mark.
Judeline
A modern French bred cider cultivar released alongside Judor, sharp-leaning and scab-resistant, intended for the same low-input orchards.
Judor
A modern French bred sharp apple carrying scab resistance, released from the national breeding programme to give growers an acid cultivar they could crop without a heavy spray schedule.
Petit Jaune
A small yellow Breton sharp grown for one purpose: putting acid back into blends built on fruit that has almost none.
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.
Regona
The most acid cultivar the Asturian designation characterises, at 7,1 g/L, and one of the most planted: a late, hard, acid-bitter fruit that supplies the backbone of *sidra natural*.
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 the difference between french cidre and english cider — French cidre is usually sweeter, weaker and more carbonated, because fermentation is arrested while sugar remains. English cider is more often fermented dry and finished still or lightly sparkling, and is stronger for it.
- How do you adjust the acidity of cider
- How long can apples be kept before pressing
- What is juice blending
- What is normandy cider
- What does cidre fermier mean
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.
Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)
IFPC · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The French technical institute for cider production. The authority for the French cultivar classification families, for keeving as an industrial process, and for the pectin and nitrogen chemistry that keeving depends on.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.