Cider apple
Netherton Late Blower
A Devon cider apple named for flowering later than almost anything else, valued on frost-prone sites for that reason above any quality of its juice.
Also written Netherton Late Blower Apple, Late Blower.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Bittersweet base, Late season
- Origin
- Netherton, Devon
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
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 mild bittersweet on description. The cultivar is grown for its flowering behaviour rather than its juice, and no analysis attaches to it.
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 | Low | |
| Tannin | Moderate | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Noticeable | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Medium |
Description in Devon cultivar listings.
Contributes mild bittersweet character, and is planted for its blossom timing rather than its flavour.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Netherton Late Blower, 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 Netherton Late Blower. 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
- Late
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
Late October into November, following its very late flowering.
One of the latest-flowering apples in England, later than the very late group the West Country bittersweets sit in. No pollination group number is recorded for it, and its lateness is both the point of the cultivar and the reason a partner is hard to find.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Low acid
- Mild tannin
How it is used
- Planted on frost pockets and valley-bottom sites where earlier blossom is regularly lost
- A mild component of Devon farm blends
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Grown for the tree rather than the fruit.
About Netherton Late Blower
Netherton Late Blower is a cultivar that solves a site problem rather than a blending one. Spring frost in a West Country valley bottom will take the blossom off an ordinary apple in a bad year, and a tree that flowers a fortnight later can set a crop when its neighbours have set nothing. That is worth more on such a site than any quality of the juice, and it is the reason the fruit has a name at all.
The trade-off is pollination. Very late flowering removes a tree from the pool of partners available to everything else in the orchard, and leaves it needing another very late flowerer of its own. There are few, and a block of late-flowering cultivars planted together is the usual solution.
The juice is a mild bittersweet with no particular character, and nothing analytical is recorded for it. It is included here because flowering behaviour is a real and underdiscussed axis of cider cultivar choice, and this is the fruit that makes the point most plainly.
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
Named for a Devon locality and for the tree’s very late blossom. The origin is unrecorded, and "Netherton" occurs in several parishes.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Late Blower | Regional name | The short form, which describes a property rather than identifying a cultivar. |
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.
Brown Snout
A Herefordshire mild bittersweet named for the russet patch at its eye, valued for compact growth and regular cropping rather than for concentration.
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.
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.
Ashton Brown Jersey
A late, full bittersweet selected at Long Ashton from Somerset material, giving high tannin and a long finish from a tree that crops poorly.
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
- 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.
- 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.
- What is brown snout
- What is vilberie
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.
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.
NIAB (incorporating East Malling Research)
NIAB · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
East Malling developed the M-series apple rootstocks that determine tree size in essentially every modern orchard, cider orchards included. The authority CiderHQ uses for rootstock behaviour.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.