Cider apple
Panquerina
A mild Asturian semi-sharp of local reputation, used as a middle term in blends and permitted within the Asturian designation.
Also written Panquerina de Asturias.
- Classification
- Semi-acid — Asturian technological blocks
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Sugar and body
- Origin
- Asturias
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
Asturian technological blocks
Semi-acid · Semiácido
Intermediate acidity with low phenolics. Together with the acid block this is where most admitted fruit sits.
Assessed in Asturias, as characterised for the protected designation.
Published by the Consejo Regulador of DOP Sidra de Asturias as “Semiácido”, on total acidity 4,3 g/L as sulphuric acid and total polyphenols 1,2 g/L as tannic acid. Asturian practice reports acidity as sulphuric acid, so the figure is not directly comparable with an English or North American malic-acid 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 | Moderate | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | None | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Asturian semi-sharp classification under the SERIDA scheme.
Balanced and mild, with moderate acid and a soft finish.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Panquerina, 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.
Titratable acidity4.3 g/L
Asturias, Spain, Published characterisation, retrieved 2026-08-24 · Total acidity expressed as sulphuric acid equivalent, the Spanish convention. Not comparable with a malic-acid figure without conversion: multiply by about 1.37 to reach malic-acid equivalent. · Consejo Regulador de la DOP Sidra de Asturias
Acid measured by neutralisation — the quantity of acid, not its strength. Measured in grams per litre.
Total phenolics1.2 g/L
Asturias, Spain, Published characterisation, retrieved 2026-08-24 · Total polyphenols expressed as tannic acid equivalent. · Consejo Regulador de la DOP Sidra de Asturias
All phenolic compounds together, usually reported as gallic acid equivalents. Measured in grams per litre.
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.
DOP Sidra de Asturias varietal characterisation
Asturias, northern Spain · Published characterisation, retrieved 2026-08-24 · Consejo Regulador de la DOP Sidra de Asturias
Atlantic and markedly wet — cool summers, mild winters and high rainfall on the Bay of Biscay coast, a climate that suits high-acid fruit and long, cool ferments.
- Harvest
- the second ten days of October (published as “2ª decena de octubre”)
Filed here as semiacido.
Vigour: moderate to low. Susceptibility to fungal disease: high to moderate. Flowering: mid-season to late. Cropping: a good level of cropping. As characterised by the Consejo Regulador.
Total acidity expressed as grams per litre of sulphuric acid, the Spanish convention; total polyphenols as grams per litre of tannic acid. Characterisation carried out by the fruit-research programme of SERIDA and published by the Consejo Regulador.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
The Consejo Regulador records ripening in the second ten days of October (“2ª decena de octubre”).
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Moderate acid
- Low phenolics
- Reasonable sugar
How it is used
- Blending fruit in sidra natural
- On the permitted-variety list of the Asturian protected designation
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Not part of Asturian practice.
About Panquerina
Panquerina is a mild semi-sharp, one of a large group of Asturian cultivars sitting in the middle of the acid range with almost no phenolic content. It is used the way that group is used: as the bulk of a blend, against a smaller proportion of sharper and sweeter fruit.
It is worth restating what this means for the finished cider. Because the fruit is analytically undramatic, the character of sidra natural is made overwhelmingly by what happens after pressing — a long, cool, uninoculated fermentation with a succession of wild yeasts, a malolactic conversion that softens the acid, extended contact with lees, and a working tolerance for oxidative and phenolic notes that would be called faults in a modern clean cidery. The fruit sets the frame; the cellar paints the picture.
There is no analysis to cite for this cultivar and no distinct tasting record, and the entry says so rather than manufacturing detail.
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.
Manttoni
A Basque cultivar of good reputation with balanced acid and pronounced aroma, one of the cultivars a *sagardotegi* will name when describing a serious blend.
Ollo Mouro
A Galician cultivar named for its dark eye, used in the region’s cider and one of the fruits its small revival has taken up.
Repinaldo
A conical Galician apple of long standing, one of the cultivars the region’s small cider revival has built on, and a name shared with fruit elsewhere in Iberia.
Collaos
A late, moderately-cropping Asturian semi-acid cultivar, ripening at the very end of November — later than almost anything else on the permitted list.
De la Riega
A well-regarded Asturian cultivar in the semi-acid block at 4,3 g/L, low in disease and reliable in crop — balanced rather than sweet, despite a mild eating character.
Errezil
A celebrated Basque russet reinette from the village of Errezil, primarily an eating and cooking apple with a protected reputation, and used in cider where the crop allows.
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 does cider ferment — Yeast consumes the sugar in apple juice and produces roughly equal masses of ethanol and carbon dioxide, along with the esters and higher alcohols that give cider much of its aroma. In a wild ferment several yeast species take turns before *Saccharomyces* finishes the job.
- How do you blend cider
- What is malolactic fermentation — Malolactic fermentation is a bacterial conversion of sharp malic acid into softer lactic acid, releasing carbon dioxide. It lowers total acidity and raises pH, and in cider it is often the source of a farmyard or buttery note as well.
- What is sidra natural — Sidra natural is the still, dry, unfiltered cider of Asturias and the Basque Country, bottled without added carbonation and poured from a height to rouse it. It is tart, funky and made to be drunk in small measures poured one at a time.
- How long can cider sit on its lees
- What is asturian 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.
Servicio Regional de Investigación y Desarrollo Agroalimentario (SERIDA)
Principado de Asturias · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The Asturian regional agri-food research service, and the technical authority behind the Asturian cultivar classification and the analysis of sidra natural. SERIDA’s own site has not been opened; what CiderHQ has read is SERIDA’s varietal characterisation as republished by the Consejo Regulador of DOP Sidra de Asturias, which credits it explicitly. The Asturian measurements therefore cite the Consejo rather than SERIDA — citing the body that did the work, at a document CiderHQ has not seen, would be exactly the kind of borrowed authority this register exists to prevent.
Denominación de Origen Protegida Sidra de Asturias
Consejo Regulador de la DOP Sidra de Asturias · designation authority · passage verified 2026-08-24
The regulating council for Asturian cider. Read on 2026-08-24, and it turned out to carry far more than a permitted-variety list: an agronomic and technological characterisation of each admitted variety, with total acidity, total polyphenols, vigour, flowering, ripening, cropping and susceptibility to fungal disease. The characterisation is credited to SERIDA’s fruit-research programme. Two things it settles are corrections to what CiderHQ previously held: Asturias sorts cider fruit into nine technological blocks rather than five, and it publishes acidity as sulphuric acid rather than malic. The figures are transcribed into `data/trials/serida-asturias.ts` and cite this source, because this is where they were read.
Primary authority Evidence standard for this record. What that means.