Cider apple
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.
Also written Reinaldo, Repinaldo de Galicia, Repinaldo do País.
- Classification
- Semi-acid — Asturian technological blocks
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Aroma, Acid lift, Sugar and body
- Origin
- Galicia
- 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.
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 | Moderate | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Description in Galician orchard practice as a balanced, aromatic dual-purpose apple, with the classification an approximation from a neighbouring region’s scheme.
Moderately acid and distinctly aromatic, with a firm flesh that presses well and a conical shape that makes it recognisable in a heap.
Aroma
Descriptors associated with this fruit. Each names a character with a known cause, and association is not a promise — what reaches the glass depends on the ferment as much as on the apple.
- Ripe apple — Full orchard-apple aroma from the acetate esters an apple accumulates through ripening and carries into the finished drink.
Measured analysis
CiderHQ holds no sourced juice analysis for Repinaldo. 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
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
Juice and pressing
- Balanced acid and sugar
- Aromatic
- Low phenolics
How it is used
- Galician farm cider, and dual use as eating and cooking fruit
- A component of the modern Galician cider revival
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
Balanced enough to be made alone, and some of the small Galician producers have done so. The tradition behind it is thin.
About Repinaldo
Galicia has a cider tradition that is real, old and much smaller than its Asturian and Basque neighbours’. It was largely domestic — cider made on farms for the household — and it declined further than the others before anything resembling a revival began. Repinaldo is one of the cultivars that survived in farm orchards to be available when it did.
Its name is a problem of the familiar kind, made worse by geography. Repinaldo and Reinaldo names occur across north-western Iberia, in Galicia, in Castile and in northern Portugal, and it is not established whether they refer to one fruit, a related group, or simply a conical shape. CiderHQ records the Galician fruit and declines to assert an identity with the others.
The classification here should be read with more scepticism than the Asturian ones. The Asturian scheme’s thresholds were fitted to Asturian fruit; Galicia is a different climate with a different population, and no scheme of its own is in CiderHQ’s register. The placement is an approximation and is labelled as one.
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
The name is old and widespread across north-western Iberia. A Galician origin for the fruit grown there under it is likely and not documented.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Reinaldo | Historic spelling | Galicia. |
| Repinaldo de Zamora | Disputed identity | Repinaldo names occur in Castile and in Portugal as well as in Galicia. Whether they refer to one fruit, a group, or a shape is not established, and CiderHQ does not assert an identity between them. |
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.
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.
Goikoetxe
An aromatic Basque cultivar from Bizkaia, valued for the fruit character it brings to a blend that is otherwise built on acid.
Panquerina
A mild Asturian semi-sharp of local reputation, used as a middle term in blends and permitted within the Asturian designation.
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.
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
- Where does a ripe apple aroma in cider come from — Full orchard-apple aroma from the acetate esters an apple accumulates through ripening and carries into the finished drink.
- Why is galician cider so little known — Yes, and it has been documented for centuries, but it has always been overshadowed by Asturias next door and by Galicia’s own wine. It holds no protected cider name and its cultivar repertoire — Repinaldo, Rabiosa, Ollo Mouro — is its own.
- Is cider made in galicia
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.
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.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.