Cider apple
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.
Also written Peau-de-Chien.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — French cider apple families
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Tannin and structure, Late season
- Origin
- Normandy
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Moderate
- 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.
Bittersweet, sitting towards the more tannic end of the family.
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 | Marked | |
| Astringency | Drying | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Full |
French bittersweet family placement, towards the tannic end.
Dry and firmly astringent with a slightly nutty note that russeted apples often carry into juice.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Peau de Chien, 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.
Malic acid5.9 g/L
France — orchards supplying the IFPC cider-apple juice characterisation, 2018 · Reported as malic acid. Single-season characterisation of twelve varieties chosen as recent or commonly planted. · Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)
The dominant acid in apple and pear juice, and the one that tastes sharp. Measured in grams per litre.
Specific gravity1.079 SG
France — orchards supplying the IFPC cider-apple juice characterisation, 2018 · 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. · Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)
Juice density, the practical proxy for sugar before fermentation. Measured in specific gravity.
pH4.20 pH
France — orchards supplying the IFPC cider-apple juice characterisation, 2018 · Meter on pressed juice. · Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)
Acid strength, which governs microbial risk and sulphite effectiveness. Measured in ph.
Total phenolics1604.3 mg/L
France — orchards supplying the IFPC cider-apple juice characterisation, 2018 · Total polyphenols; the presentation does not name the assay, though the magnitudes are consistent with Folin–Ciocalteu. · Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)
The assay is not named by the source. Compare with other French figures rather than with a permanganate tannin figure.
All phenolic compounds together, usually reported as gallic acid equivalents. Measured in milligrams 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.
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 “Peau de Chien”
- 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
- Late
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
Russeted skin loses water slowly, which is a general property of russets rather than anything peculiar to this cultivar.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | low | Russeted cultivars often show scab less obviously; whether the fruit is genuinely less infected or merely less visibly marked is not always clear. |
Juice and pressing
- Firm tannin
- Low acid
- Good keeping means the juice can be pressed on the mill’s schedule rather than the tree’s
How it is used
- Tannin and body in Cotentin and Norman blends
- Late pressing from stored fruit
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
The astringency dominates without acid to balance it; it works better as a component.
About Peau de Chien
Peau de Chien is named for what it looks like, which is how a great deal of traditional fruit acquired its name. Heavy russeting gives the skin a dull, rough, brownish finish, and a farmer sorting a mixed load can pick it out of a heap without thinking. Names of this kind — descriptive, unsentimental, sometimes rude — are more reliable identifiers than the grand nursery names, because they were coined by the people handling the fruit.
The russet has practical consequences. A thick, corky skin transpires slowly, so the fruit shrivels less in store and can be held for weeks without losing juice yield. In a Norman farm cellar this meant Peau de Chien could wait its turn at the press, which is worth more than it sounds when a single mill has to work through an entire orchard.
Its juice is a firm bittersweet, more astringent than bitter, with the faintly nutty quality that russeted fruit tends to bring. It is a component rather than a feature: used for grip and body in blends that get their acid from elsewhere, and now uncommon outside older Cotentin and Norman orchards.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
- Do you need to sort apples before pressing
- What is normandy cider
- What does cidre fermier mean
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.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.