Cider apple
Rewena
A modern German bred cultivar carrying scab resistance, released from the Pillnitz breeding programme and taken up in organic orchards and low-input Most production.
Also written Re-Wena.
- Classification
- Not classified under any recorded system
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Bulk juice
- Origin
- Dresden-Pillnitz, Saxony, Germany
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
No classification scheme has been recorded for Rewena. That is common outside Europe: the English, French and Spanish systems were each built for their own fruit, and a cultivar grown where none of them applies simply has no class. What the fruit contributes to a blend is described below regardless — the class is a shorthand for that, not a substitute.
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 | High | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Description as a moderately acid dual-purpose cultivar bred for disease resistance. No registered classification scheme covers German fruit.
Moderately acid and firm, with a clean, plain flavour; it was bred for how it grows rather than for how it tastes.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Rewena, 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 Rewena. 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
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Good
Regular cropping was a breeding objective.
Juice and pressing
- Moderate acid
- Reliable analysis year on year
- No tannin
How it is used
- Organic and low-input German orchards
- Most, juice and processing fruit
- Replanting of Streuobstwiesen where a resistant cultivar is wanted
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
A component rather than a feature.
About Rewena
Rewena comes from the Pillnitz breeding programme in Saxony, which produced a series of scab-resistant apple cultivars distinguishable by the "Re-" at the start of every name. The objective was straightforward: apple scab is the dominant fungal disease of European apple growing, controlling it accounts for a large share of orchard spraying, and a resistant cultivar removes most of that cost.
The resistance needs describing carefully. Major-gene resistance derived from wild Malus has been overcome by adapted races of Venturia inaequalis in several European growing regions, so a cultivar described as scab-resistant is making a claim about a moving target rather than stating a permanent property. Growers who planted resistant cultivars on the assumption that no fungicide would ever be needed have in some cases been disappointed.
Its presence in Most orchards is worth noting against the romantic picture of German cider fruit. The Streuobstwiese is a conservation priority and a repository of old cultivars, but replanting is a live activity, and what goes into the ground now includes purpose-bred fruit from a research institute. A German cider made in 2030 will contain some of it.
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 · documented
One of the Pillnitz “Re-” series of scab-resistant cultivars, whose names all begin with those two letters. The programme’s output is documented in institutional records even where CiderHQ has not verified the individual cross.
Parentage · not established
Bred within a programme that introgressed major-gene scab resistance from a wild Malus source through several generations of backcrossing. CiderHQ does not state a specific pedigree it has not verified.
Why it matters
- Evidence that the German orchard is being actively rebuilt rather than merely conserved, and that new cultivars enter Most production as well as the dessert market
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.
Blanquina
A pale-skinned Asturian cultivar of high reputation, and — like Raxao, with which it is usually named — an acid-block fruit rather than a semi-acid one.
Bramley’s Seedling
England’s dominant cooking apple, a triploid of very high acid and negligible tannin, and by volume one of the most important fruits in modern British cider.
Browns Apple
The standard Devon sharp: a bright red, heavy-cropping, high-acid apple with almost no tannin, and the fruit most English blends reach for when they need lift.
Granny Smith
An Australian chance seedling of the 1860s that became one of the most planted apples on earth, and — because it is reliably sharp when almost nothing else commercial is — a genuine workhorse of commercial cider worldwide.
McIntosh
The defining apple of eastern Canada and northern New England — an Ontario seedling of about 1811 whose perfumed, high-acid juice is the aromatic foundation of most Quebec and northeastern cider.
Regona
The most acid cultivar the Asturian designation characterises, at 7,1 g/L, and one of the most planted: a late, hard, acid-bitter fruit that supplies the backbone of *sidra natural*.
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 apfelwein — Apfelwein is the dry, still, tart apple cider of Hessen in Germany, known locally as Ebbelwoi and served from a stoneware jug into a ridged glass. Despite the name it is a cider, not a wine in any technical sense.
- Why is apfelwein associated with frankfurt — Hessen kept a dense landscape of scattered orchard trees around Frankfurt and a network of pressing works to work them, and the drink became a city institution with its own glass, its own jug and its own taverns.
- What is most the drink — In Austria, southern Germany and Switzerland *Most* is fermented apple or pear juice — the local cider. Confusingly, *Süßmost* is the unfermented juice, so the word alone does not tell you whether there is alcohol in the glass.
- What is most in germany — In Baden-Württemberg, Most is farm apple wine made from mixed standard-orchard fruit. The region holds the largest meadow-orchard landscape in Europe, and the word means something different again in Austria and Switzerland.
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.
Hochschule Geisenheim University — beverage technology
Hochschule Geisenheim · university · retrieved 2026-08-24
German beverage-technology research covering apple wine and fruit juice processing, including the enzymology of clarification.
GRIN-Global germplasm database — Malus and Pyrus
United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.