Cider apple
Patzuloa
A Basque cultivar at the mild end of the range, used for sugar and softness in sagardoa blends built on sharper fruit.
Also written Patzulo, Patzuloa Sagarra.
- Classification
- Sweet — Asturian technological blocks
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Sugar and body, Bulk juice
- Origin
- Basque Country
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
How it is classified
Asturian technological blocks
Sweet · Dulce
Low acid and low phenolics. Contributes sugar and body without sharpening or gripping the blend.
The Consejo Regulador publishes a technological block only for varieties DOP Sidra de Asturias admits, and this fruit is not among them. The block here is CiderHQ reading descriptive sources against the Asturian definitions rather than a published characterisation, and is the weaker statement of the two.
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 | Light | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | None | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Placement with the sweet class in Basque practice, with a wide acid band because the placement is not agreed.
Soft and mild with modest acid; a filling fruit rather than a shaping one.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Patzuloa, 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 Patzuloa. 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
- Mid
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Moderate to good sugar
- Low acid
- Low phenolics
How it is used
- Sugar and softening in Basque sagardoa
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Nothing in it would carry a cider alone.
About Patzuloa
Patzuloa completes the Basque group in this file as one of the sweet or near-sweet cultivars that keep a sagardoa blend from being all acid. It is planted in modest numbers, described briefly in the literature, and used without ceremony.
The Basque repertoire as a whole is smaller than the Asturian one and much smaller than the Norman one, partly because the region is smaller and partly because the tradition came closer to disappearing. What survived was what was still growing in farm orchards when the revival began, and the modern Basque cultivar list is a record of that survival as much as of any selection for quality.
Its classification is not agreed — sweet in most accounts, intermediate in some — and the record reflects that with a wide band rather than a confident placement.
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.
Gezamiña
A Basque sweet cultivar whose name derives from the word for bland or insipid, describing exactly what it contributes: sugar without acid.
Verdialona
A late green Asturian apple the designation places in the sweet block, at 2,7 g/L of acid — low for a region whose fruit is built on acidity.
Chata blanca
An Asturian cider apple admitted to the protected designation and characterised as sweet — 1,82 g/L of acid well below the register’s median, with 0,99 g/L of polyphenols, ripening in the first ten days of November.
Dura
An Asturian cider apple admitted to the protected designation and characterised as sweet — 3,37 g/L of acid below the register’s median, with 1,05 g/L of polyphenols, ripening in the first ten days of October.
Paraguas
An Asturian cider apple admitted to the protected designation and characterised as sweet — 3,08 g/L of acid well below the register’s median, with 1,13 g/L of polyphenols, ripening in the last ten days of November.
Verdosa
An Asturian cider apple admitted to the protected designation and characterised as sweet — 2,02 g/L of acid well below the register’s median, with 0,49 g/L of polyphenols, ripening in the second ten days of November.
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 euskal sagardoa
- What is basque 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.
NEIKER Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development
NEIKER · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
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.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.