Cider apple
Noël des Champs
A very late Norman bittersweet whose name places its harvest at Christmas, grown to keep a press working when everything else has been milled.
Also written Noel des Champs.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — French cider apple families
- Harvest
- Very late (November onwards)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Late season, Tannin and structure
- Origin
- Normandy
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 5
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
How it is classified
French cider apple families
Bittersweet · Douce-amère
Low acid with substantial tannin.
Basis: Tannin 2 to 3 g/L and acidity below 3 g/L as H₂SO₄.
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 | Firm | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | Moderate | |
| Astringency | Noticeable | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Medium |
French bittersweet placement together with a consistent description as a very late-keeping tannic apple.
Firm and dry with a slow bitterness; the flesh is hard enough at picking that it needs weeks before it will mill properly.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Noël des Champs, 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 Noël des Champs. 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
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
Picked at the end of the season and held; the name implies a Christmas pressing and old practice took that reasonably literally.
Juice and pressing
- Moderate to high tannin
- Very low acid
- Holds condition in store for months
How it is used
- Winter pressing on Norman farms
- Cider laid down for spring drinking and for distillation
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Too low in acid and too hard to make a balanced cider alone.
About Noël des Champs
Noël des Champs is a cultivar shaped by the calendar of a farm rather than by the preferences of a blender. A press was an expensive, immovable piece of equipment, and a farm that owned one wanted to use it for as many weeks as possible. Apples that could be picked at the end of November and milled in late December extended the season at the tail end, and a handful of Norman cultivars were kept for precisely that.
The fruit is hard at picking — hard enough that milling it fresh gives a poor yield and a dry pomace — and Norman practice sweats it in a heap until the flesh yields to a thumb. This is not the same as letting fruit rot: sweating allows starch to finish converting and softens cell walls so the mill can break them, and a cultivar as late and as firm as this one depends on it.
Its low acid and firm tannin place it squarely in the Norman bittersweet pattern, and it was used the way all of them were used: as the structural bulk of a blend that got its lift from a Locard or another sharp. It is now rare, its seasonal advantage having disappeared with fast hydraulic and belt presses.
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
Like Saint Martin, the name marks a date in the farming calendar rather than a raiser. Whether every tree grown under it descends from one original is not established.
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.
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.
Argile Rouge
A late, dark-skinned Norman bittersweet whose name refers to the heavy red clay soils it was selected on, and which behaves very differently on lighter ground.
Nehou
A Norman bittersweet long grown in English orchards, giving high tannin from a small, late, hard fruit and cropping better than most of its class.
Peau de Chien
A heavily russeted Norman bittersweet whose unflattering name — “dog skin” — describes the rough, dull, leathery finish that also marks it out in a mixed load of fruit.
Rouget de Dol
A red-skinned bittersweet from the Dol country of eastern Brittany, sitting between the Breton and Norman traditions in both geography and character.
Bedan
A mild Norman bittersweet, planted more widely across the Domfrontais and the Pays d’Auge than almost any other traditional cultivar, and valued as much for how its juice keeves as for how it tastes.
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.
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 are apples milled for cider
- How do you blend cider
- 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 long can apples be kept before pressing
- What does sweating apples mean — Sweating is holding picked fruit in a heap or store for days or weeks before milling, so it softens, loses water and gains sugar concentration. Perry pears in particular are usually held until they yield to the thumb.
- What is normandy 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.
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.