Cider apple
Roter Trierer Weinapfel
The red Trierer Weinapfel, recorded in German practice as a cultivar in its own right and frequently described as a sport of the green one, with the relationship unresolved.
Also written Roter Weinapfel, Rote Trierer Weinapfel.
- Classification
- Not classified under any recorded system
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Tannin and structure
- Origin
- The Trier district, Moselle, Germany
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 4
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
No classification scheme has been recorded for Roter Trierer Weinapfel. 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 | Moderate | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Noticeable | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Described in Moselle practice in the same terms as the green form, with the colour as the reported difference.
As sharp and as hard as the green form, with a red skin that carries more colour into the must.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Roter Trierer Weinapfel, 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 Roter Trierer Weinapfel. 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 4
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
Juice and pressing
- Very high acid
- Some phenolic material
- Anthocyanin-pigmented skin, which tints the juice
How it is used
- Moselle and Saarland Viez
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
As for the green form: very dry and very sharp, which is the traditional character of Viez.
About Roter Trierer Weinapfel
Whether the Roter Trierer Weinapfel is a distinct cultivar or a red sport of the green one is a question the record does not answer, and it is a good example of a distinction that matters more to a database than to a cider maker. A grower pressing a mixed load of Trierer Weinapfel does not care; a knowledge base that has to decide whether to write one record or two does.
Colour sports are common in apples. A bud mutation affecting anthocyanin production in the skin produces a redder version of an existing cultivar with essentially identical fruit chemistry, and the horticultural trade has propagated such sports deliberately for a century. If the red Trierer is one of these, the two records here describe one genotype. If it is a separate seedling that happened to arise in the same district and acquire the same use-name, they do not.
CiderHQ keeps two records because German practice keeps two names, and states the uncertainty rather than resolving it by assertion. DNA fingerprinting would settle it; nothing in the published record does.
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
German sources treat it as distinct from the green Trierer Weinapfel and some describe it as a red sport of it. A colour sport would be genetically the same cultivar; a separate seedling would not. CiderHQ records the two separately and states that the question is open.
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.
Hewe’s Crab
The historic cider crab of Virginia — small, hard, very high in acid and unusually tannic for an American apple, and probably a hybrid between a cultivated apple and a native crab.
Kingston Black
The most celebrated English single-varietal cider apple: a small dark-red bittersharp carrying acid and tannin in one fruit, and a tree difficult enough that its reputation has always outrun its plantings.
Durona de Tresali
A very hard, very late Asturian cultivar from the parish of Tresali, in the acid-bitter block, and one of the last fruits of the season to be pressed.
Sauergrauech
An old Bernese cider apple, sharp and unusually astringent for the region, and one of the few Swiss cultivars that a cider maker would recognise as purpose-grown press fruit.
Stoke Red
A small, dense, dark-red Somerset bittersharp carrying both high acid and substantial tannin, and the most reliable alternative to Kingston Black for a single-varietal cider.
Trierer Weinapfel
The characteristic apple of Moselle *Viez*: a small, hard, very acid fruit from the Trier country, with a little more phenolic grip than most German cider apples.
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 maceration in cider making — Maceration is letting milled pomace stand before pressing, so that enzymes soften the tissue and phenolics and aroma move from the skins into the juice. It raises both colour and tannin, and raises the risk of oxidation with them.
- What apple is moselle viez made from — Trierer Weinapfel is the characteristic one: a small, hard, very acid apple from the Trier country, with a little more phenolic grip than most German cider fruit.
- Where does viez come from — Dry apple wine from the German Moselle around Trier and from the Saarland, drunk from a distinctive earthenware vessel. It is a regional name for a regional drink rather than a legally defined category.
- Where is viez drunk — The Saarland identifies with Viez more strongly than anywhere else — there is a marked Viezstrasse through the region — and the Moselle around Trier shares the drink and the word.
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.
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.