Cider apple
Marie Ménard
A small, dark red Breton apple with among the highest polyphenol contents of any cultivar in French cider use, planted in small quantity and used in smaller proportion still.
Also written Marie Menard.
- Classification
- Bitter — French cider apple families
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Tannin and structure
- Origin
- Brittany, most probably Ille-et-Vilaine
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 2
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
French cider apple families
Bitter · Amère
Very high tannin with low acid — more tannic than the bittersweet family and used in smaller proportion.
Basis: Tannin above 3 g/L and acidity below 3 g/L as H₂SO₄.
Consistently placed at the extreme end of the bitter family; there is no serious disagreement about this one.
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 | Heavy | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Dominant | |
| Astringency | Harsh | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Full |
Consistent placement at the top of the French bitter family across French cider practice.
Almost undrinkable as juice: an immediate, mouth-coating astringency with a bitterness that builds rather than fades. Sugar and acid are both low enough to leave the tannin entirely unopposed.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Marie Ménard, 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 | 61 mm | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Juice yield | 536 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pH2 readings, spanning 4.16–4.40 pH | 4.16 pH | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 4.40 pH | France — orchards supplying the IFPC cider-apple juice characterisation | 2018Modern analysis | Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC) | |
| Specific gravity2 readings, spanning 1.057–1.064 SG | 1.057 SG | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 1.064 SG | France — orchards supplying the IFPC cider-apple juice characterisation | 2018Modern analysis | Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC) | |
| Brix | 13.7 °Bx | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Malic acid | 2.9 g/L | France — orchards supplying the IFPC cider-apple juice characterisation | 2018Modern analysis | Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC) |
| Total acid | 0.280 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Total phenolics | 2332.9 mg/L | France — orchards supplying the IFPC cider-apple juice characterisation | 2018Modern analysis | Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC) |
| Total tannin | 0.420 % w/v | 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
- Permanganate titration against indigo carmine, reported as tannic acid equivalent
- Titration, reported as malic acid equivalent
- Published as 2.42 inches; converted at 25.4 mm to the inch
- Juice pressed from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Published as 243 mL/lb; converted at 2.204623 lb to the kilogram
- Reported as malic acid. Single-season characterisation of twelve varieties chosen as recent or commonly planted.
- Published as density in grams per litre (masse volumique) and stored here as specific gravity by exact division; no temperature correction is stated by the source.
- Meter on pressed juice.
- Total polyphenols; the presentation does not name the assay, though the magnitudes are consistent with Folin–Ciocalteu.
- The assay is not named by the source. Compare with other French figures rather than with a permanganate tannin figure.
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
- 4 May
- Harvest
- 24 September
- Bloom density
- 3.4 of 5
- Growth habit
- –
- Bearing
- –
- Rootstocks
- M9
Filed here as bittersweet.
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.
IFPC cider apple juice characterisation
France — orchards supplying the Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles · 2018 · Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)
Northern French cider country, chiefly Normandy and Brittany: maritime, mild, wet, and the closest continental analogue to the English West Country. The source does not break the samples down by orchard, so the location here is as precise as the evidence allows.
- Held as
- Listed as “Marie Ménard”
- Total acidity, published as A “total acidity” column, ranging 0.9 to 9.1 across the twelve varieties. The source does not state the unit. The French convention expresses total acidity as sulphuric acid, which would put it at 0.73 times the malic figure; the printed ratio is nearer 0.45 to 0.55, which matches neither that convention nor a malic one. Rather than guess a unit and publish a number in it, CiderHQ publishes the malic acid figure the source does label and records this column as unusable.
Twelve varieties, one harvest. Malic acid, total acidity, density, pH and total polyphenols measured on pressed juice; sensory profiling run alongside on the same juices. The assay behind the polyphenol column is not named, and the unit behind the total acidity column is not stated.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Pollination group 2
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
Flowers early, which in Brittany means it is exposed to spring frost more often than the late-flowering Norman fruit.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Spring frost damage to blossom | high | A consequence of early flowering rather than of any tenderness in the tree itself. |
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Very high procyanidin content
- Very low assimilable nitrogen — among the fruit most reliably associated with a clean keeve
- Low sugar relative to other bitters
How it is used
- A small-proportion tannin correction in Breton and Norman blends
- Keeving trials and demonstrations, because its juice defecates so readily
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
It is used at a few per cent of a blend for a reason. Alone it produces something closer to an infusion of apple skin than to cider.
About Marie Ménard
Marie Ménard is the fruit that makes the point about French bitters most bluntly. Its polyphenol content is at the top of the range found in cider apples anywhere, its acid is negligible, and it is used at proportions that would look like a rounding error in an English blend. It is not a base fruit and was never intended as one.
Its real technical significance is in keeving. The combination of very low assimilable nitrogen and abundant pectin is what French practice wants: the pectin, demethylated by the fruit’s own pectin methylesterase and cross-linked by added calcium, forms a gel that floats the brown cap and carries the nitrogen and much of the yeast out of the juice with it. What is left ferments slowly and stops while sugar remains. Marie Ménard does this more reliably than almost anything else, which is why it turns up in technical discussions of the process out of all proportion to how much of it is planted.
The early flowering is its chief orchard liability. In Brittany it blossoms ahead of the main crop and takes frost damage in cold springs, and a grower planting it is accepting a variable crop from a tree that already alternates. Because so little of it goes into any blend, that variability is easier to absorb than it would be for a base cultivar.
It should not be described as a French version of a heavy English bittersweet. English bittersweets are base fruit, fermented dry, and expected to carry a blend. Marie Ménard is a corrective added in small measure to a juice that will be kept sweet by arresting the ferment. The two fruits have high tannin in common and almost nothing else.
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 personal name, which usually indicates a seedling raised or noticed by an individual, but no record of who or when survives.
Why it matters
- Frequently cited in French technical work on keeving because of how cleanly its low-nitrogen, high-pectin juice forms a chapeau brun
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.
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.
Kermerrien
The Breton bitter apple most often named on a bottle: firmly tannic, distinctly aromatic, and one of the few French cider cultivars with a genuine claim to standing alone.
Vilberie
A very late Norman bittersweet grown widely in England, carrying tannin at the top of the range and ripening after almost everything else has been pressed.
Avrolles
A hard, very late French bitter apple, one of the group brought to England in the 1880s import wave and analysed there, and now scarce on both sides of the Channel.
Amère de Berthecourt
A bitter apple from the Picard borderlands north-east of Normandy, used in the small proportions its name implies and now rare.
Cartigny
A hard northern French bitter apple of the type used in small proportion for phenolic concentration, now uncommon and thinly documented.
Styles it is characteristic of
Cidre Pays d’Auge
The controlled appellation cider of the Pays d’Auge in Calvados, made by keeving from bitter Norman fruit and bottle-conditioned to a low alcohol and a high residual sugar.
Cidre de Normandie
Protected Normandy cider made from the region’s bitter and bittersweet fruit, characteristically low in alcohol, sweet-edged and lightly sparkling.
Keeved cider
Cider clarified before fermentation by a pectin gel that strips nutrients from the juice, producing a slow ferment that stops naturally with sugar still in solution.
Cidre brut
The dry tier of the French cider scale, defined since 2025 by a density no greater than 1.016 with an acquired strength of at least 3.5% vol — correspondingly more of the juice’s sugar converted to alcohol.
Cidre de Bretagne
Protected Breton cider, built on a distinct western fruit inventory and generally drier, lighter and more acid-led than its Norman counterpart.
Cidre fermier
Farm-made French cider, pressed and fermented on the holding that grew the fruit, sold as an agricultural product of that farm rather than as a regional or industrial one.
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 keeving — Keeving is a technique for starving a ferment of nitrogen so that it stops before all the sugar is gone, leaving a naturally sweet cider. Pectin is made to gel and float as a brown cap, carrying nutrients and yeast out of the juice with it.
- What is keeved cider — A cider made naturally sweet by starving the yeast rather than by adding sugar. Keeving strips nutrients out of the juice before fermentation, so the ferment slows and stops with fruit sugar still in it, and nothing has been put back.
- What is maceration in cider making — Maceration is letting milled pomace stand before pressing, so that enzymes soften the tissue and phenolics and aroma move from the skins into the juice. It raises both colour and tannin, and raises the risk of oxidation with them.
- What does cidre de bretagne igp actually guarantee — That the apples were grown and the cider made in the area, and that the fruit met a measured tannin floor. It permits concentrate to 40 per cent of the must, added water and injected gas, all of which the French appellations of origin forbid.
- What does the pays d auge aoc actually require — Pure cider apple juice from a closed variety list, a blend at least 70% phenolic varieties and at most 25% acidulée, compulsory maceration and pectic settling, capped orchard yields, and a sparkle that may only come from fermentation finishing in the bottle over at least six weeks. Pasteurisation, added water, added sugar and gasification are all prohibited.
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.
The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing
Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24
Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.
Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement (INRAE)
INRAE · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
French national agricultural research. Its Angers programme produced much of the published work on apple procyanidin chain length and on the relationship between polymer size, bitterness and astringency.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.