Cider apple
Major
An early, heavily bittersweet Somerset apple with high tannin and very low acid, valued for putting structure into the first pressings of the season.
Also written The Major, Cider Major.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Early (September)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Tannin and structure, Early season, Bittersweet base
- Origin
- Somerset
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
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, high on tannin and very low on acid.
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 | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Marked | |
| Astringency | Drying | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Full |
Long Ashton acid and tannin ranges for the cultivar.
Brings substantial early-season tannin, and needs sharp fruit alongside it to be usable.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Major, 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 | 58 mm | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Juice yield | 606 L/t | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total acid3 readings, spanning 0.170–0.200 % w/v | 0.120–0.220 % w/v | Long Ashton, Somerset, England | Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985Historic analysis | National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol |
| 0.200 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center | |
| 0.180 % w/v | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, Somerset, England | 1905–1975Historic analysis | Andrew Lea | |
| Total tannin3 readings, spanning 0.210–0.410 % w/v | 0.260–0.360 % w/v | Long Ashton, Somerset, England | Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985Historic analysis | National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol |
| 0.210 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center | |
| 0.410 % w/v | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, Somerset, England | 1905–1975Historic analysis | Andrew Lea | |
| Brix | 12.9 °Bx | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| pH | 4.23 pH | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Specific gravity | 1.051 SG | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
2 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
- Titration of pressed juice, reported as malic acid
- Permanganate titration against indigo carmine, reported as tannic acid equivalent
- Titration, reported as malic acid equivalent
- Published as 2.3 inches; converted at 25.4 mm to the inch
- Juice pressed from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Published as 275 mL/lb; converted at 2.204623 lb to the kilogram
- Titration with alkali, reported as malic acid. Composite figure across many seasons; the source states neither the sample count nor the year of any individual analysis.
- Löwenthal permanganate titration, reported as tannic acid equivalent. Composite figure across many seasons; the source states neither the sample count nor the year of any individual analysis.
- One Somerset site, one climate.
- A range rather than a value; the underlying per-cultivar tables are unverified.
- A composite of Long Ashton analyses reaching CiderHQ through three hands: the station’s own work, a printed compilation (Bulmer’s Pomona, 1987, and Beech and Carr, 1977), and a transcription of that compilation. CiderHQ has seen only the transcription.
- A composite of Long Ashton analyses reaching CiderHQ through three hands: the station’s own work, a printed compilation (Bulmer’s Pomona, 1987, and Beech and Carr, 1977), and a transcription of that compilation. CiderHQ has seen only the transcription. A permanganate figure. It is not comparable with a Folin–Ciocalteu total-phenolics figure for the same fruit, and the two can differ by a factor of two.
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
- 13 May
- Harvest
- 7 September
- Bloom density
- 3.6 of 5
- Productivity
- 3.7 of 5
- Growth habit
- Semi Upright
- Bearing
- Standard
- Alternate bearing
- Yes
- Blind wood
- 1.5 of 5
- Rootstocks
- M9
Filed here as bittersweet.
Color amber copper, aromatic. Highly aromatic with some fruit, earthy wood & bitterness. Long, tannic finish. Good addition to a bittersweet blend or can add body, complexity to a dessert apple blend.
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.
Long Ashton composite cider apple analyses
Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England · 1905–1975 · Andrew Lea
Maritime and mild, with wet autumns and few hard frosts — the climate the English cider cultivars were selected in, and the reason their acid and tannin figures here are the ones the rest of the world has spent a century comparing its own fruit against.
- Held as
- Listed as “Major”, early season
Filed here as bittersweet.
Marked in the source as one of the cultivars “generally regarded as having that elusive and hard-to-define character of vintage quality”. The compiler marks fourteen of the forty-two that way, and does not say who regards them so or on what evidence.
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.
Freshly expressed juice, not finished cider. Acid by straight titration against alkali, reported as malic acid; tannin by Löwenthal permanganate titration, reported as tannic acid equivalent. Composite figures across seventy years of analyses: the source gives neither a sample count nor the year of any individual reading.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Early
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
September into early October — very early for so tannic a fruit, which is the point of it.
Ripens fast and does not hold; mill it as it comes.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
| Canker | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Very low acid
- High tannin
- Available at the start of the season
How it is used
- Early-season tannin in Somerset blends
- Pressed with early sharps to make a workable first batch
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Too tannic and too low in acid to work alone, and without the season-timing advantage there would be little reason to grow it.
About Major
Major solves a scheduling problem. English cider fruit ripens on a schedule that puts the sharps first and the tannin last, so a mill starting in September has plenty of acid and nothing to give the juice structure. Major, and a handful of others like it, are the fruit that let an early-season pressing produce something more than thin cider.
The juice itself is unremarkable except for its timing: high tannin, negligible acid, moderate sugar, no aroma to speak of. Blended with early sharps it makes a serviceable farmhouse cider; blended with nothing it makes a hard and characterless one. Because it neither hangs nor stores, it has to be used when it comes, which further ties it to the early part of the season.
Nothing is known about where it came from, and the flat, functional name is itself evidence: this is a fruit that was in Somerset orchards long enough that nobody thought its origin worth writing down.
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 long-established Somerset bittersweet of unrecorded origin. The name is undecorated and old, which usually indicates a fruit that was locally common before anyone thought to record it.
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.
Ellis Bitter
An early Devon bittersweet, large and conical and deep red, giving good early-season tannin from a tree that crops heavily and unevenly.
Ashton Bitter
A twentieth-century bittersweet raised at Long Ashton, combining early ripening with substantial tannin and a compact, precocious tree.
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.
Tremlett’s Bitter
A hard Devon bittersweet with tannin at the top of the English range, used in small proportion and difficult to use in any other way.
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.
- 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 tremletts bitter
- What is tannin balancing
- What is herefordshire 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.