Cider apple

Roxbury Russet

Generally reckoned the oldest apple cultivar raised in North America — a Massachusetts russet from the seventeenth century, pressed for cider for as long as it has existed.

Also written Boston Russet, Putnam Russet.

Classification: Sharp — Long Ashton classification
Harvest: Mid (Late September to mid October)
Single varietal: Established as a single-varietal cider
Blend role: Acid lift, Aroma, Sugar and body, Vintage quality
Origin: Roxbury, Massachusetts
Species: Malus domestica
Vigour: Vigorous
Biennial bearing: Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
Keeping: Very good — holds in store for weeks

How it is classified

Long Ashton classification

Sharp

High acid, low tannin. Includes both purpose-grown sharps and many culinary apples.

Basis: Above about 0.45% w/v acid and below about 0.2% w/v tannin.

Assessed in Fruit grown in New York State trial plantings.

A modern research assignment. No historic American classification exists for this or any other colonial cultivar.

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.

Contribution to a blend, scored 1–5 as a band. The filled segment is the typical value; the paler segments are the range.
Axis	Typical	Range
Acid	High
Tannin	Light
Sugar	High
Bitterness	Slight
Astringency	Slight
Aroma	Present
Body	Medium

Based on: published analysis

Cornell acid figures from New York fruit, with the remaining axes set from consistent modern maker description.

Nutty, faintly pear-like russet character over a firm acid backbone; the juice tastes older and denser than its gravity suggests.

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.

Apple skin — The dry, faintly waxy and slightly bitter aroma of the fruit’s surface rather than its flesh, carried by cuticular waxes, hexyl esters and skin-concentrated phenolics.
Fresh-cut apple — The smell of a cut apple surface, produced within seconds of the fruit tissue being broken by six-carbon aldehydes released from membrane fats.

Put Roxbury Russet into a blend

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.

Measured on the fruit

Measured on the fruit itself, before anything was done to it. These figures hold whatever was later made from the juice.

Reported analyses of Roxbury Russet, by property and source — measured on the fruit
Property	Reading	Where	When	Source
Fruit diameter2 readings, spanning 63–73 mm	63 mm	WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA	2002–2017Modern analysis	Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center
	73 mm (67–78)	USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA	2017Modern analysis	Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Fruit weight2 readings, spanning 136–173 g	173 g (146–200)	USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA	2017Modern analysis	Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
	136 g	New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York, USA	late 1970sHistoric analysis	AVI / Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989, edited by Donald L. Downing (ISBN 0-442-22117-7)
Fruit firmness	58.9 N (47.0–70.7)	USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA	2017Modern analysis	Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Juice yield	445 L/t	WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA	2002–2017Modern analysis	Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center
Starch pattern index	8.0 SPI	USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA	2017Modern analysis	Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit

Measured on the juice

Measured on juice as pressed, before fermentation. This is where most cider analysis lives and what the classification schemes are defined on.

Reported analyses of Roxbury Russet, by property and source — measured on the juice
Property	Reading	Where	When	Source
Brix2 readings, spanning 13.9–15.9 °Bx	15.9 °Bx	WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA	2002–2017Modern analysis	Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center
	13.9 °Bx (13.3–14.6)	USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA	2017Modern analysis	Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
pH2 readings, spanning 3.50–4.35 pH	3.50 pH	WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA	2002–2017Modern analysis	Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center
	4.35 pH (4.23–4.47)	USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA	2017Modern analysis	Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Total acid2 readings, spanning 0.610–0.650 % w/v	0.500–0.800 % w/v	Geneva, New York State	2010sModern analysis	Cornell University, School of Integrative Plant Science
	0.610 % w/v	WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA	2002–2017Modern analysis	Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center
Fructose	54.5 g/L (47.3–61.7)	USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA	2017Modern analysis	Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Glucose	16.1 g/L (14.1–18.1)	USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA	2017Modern analysis	Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Sorbitol	11.5 g/L (10.5–12.5)	USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA	2017Modern analysis	Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Specific gravity	1.061 SG	WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA	2002–2017Modern analysis	Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center
Sucrose	56.1 g/L (47.5–64.7)	USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA	2017Modern analysis	Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Titratable acidity	2.2 g/L (2.1–2.3)	USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA	2017Modern analysis	Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Total phenolics	760.0 mg/L (640.0–880.0)	USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA	2017Modern analysis	Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Total tannin	0.080 % w/v	WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA	2002–2017Modern analysis	Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center

Measured on the finished drink

Measured on the finished drink, after fermentation. Not comparable with the juice figures above: fermentation, fining and time move all of these, and phenolics in particular fall substantially.

Reported analyses of Roxbury Russet, by property and source — measured on the finished drink
Property	Reading	Where	When	Source
pH (finished cider)	3.48 pH	New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York, USA	late 1970sHistoric analysis	AVI / Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989, edited by Donald L. Downing (ISBN 0-442-22117-7)
Total acid (finished cider)	0.710 % w/v	New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York, USA	late 1970sHistoric analysis	AVI / Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989, edited by Donald L. Downing (ISBN 0-442-22117-7)
Total tannin (finished cider)	0.064 % w/v	New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York, USA	late 1970sHistoric analysis	AVI / Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989, edited by Donald L. Downing (ISBN 0-442-22117-7)

5 properties here have been measured more than once. The readings are shown as they were taken and are deliberately not averaged — climate, season, ripeness at picking, the age of the tree and the analytical method all move these numbers, and a single figure would hide every one of them. Where a spread is given below a property, it is the distance between separate studies, not the variation within any one of them.

How these were measured

Permanganate titration against indigo carmine, reported as tannic acid equivalent
Titration, reported as malic acid equivalent
Published as 2.47 inches; converted at 25.4 mm to the inch
Juice pressed from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Published as 202 mL/lb; converted at 2.204623 lb to the kilogram
Mean of the fruit sampled per accession; where a bracket is shown it is one standard deviation either side of the mean, not the observed range. Published to two decimal places and shown at the precision CiderHQ displays for the unit.
Mean of the fruit sampled per accession; where a bracket is shown it is one standard deviation either side of the mean, not the observed range.
Cornell generic starch–iodine chart, 1–8, where 1 is no hydrolysis and 8 is complete. Mean of replicate fruit; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of it.
Penetrometer, mean of replicate fruit; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
Refractometer on pressed juice. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
Titration to pH 8.2 with sodium hydroxide, reported as malic acid equivalents. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
Meter on pressed juice before fermentation. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
Löwenthal permanganate titration, reported by the source as grams per litre of tannic acid equivalent and stored here as milligrams per litre by exact conversion so that it sits in one column with the Folin–Ciocalteu figures the site also holds. The two methods do not measure the same thing and are not interchangeable.
Enzymatic assay (Megazyme). Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
D-sorbitol/xylitol assay kit (Megazyme), sorbitol dehydrogenase method. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
Mean fruit weight as published. The compiler notes that a typical New York dessert apple weighs about 140 g, so most of these are small fruit — which is normal for cider cultivars and is itself the point of the column.
Titration, reported as malic acid. Analysis of finished cider.
Meter on finished cider.
Method not stated by the source, which is a real limitation: different tannin methods give wildly different figures on the same sample.

Reported as malic acid across seasons. Acid in russets falls markedly if the fruit is held in store before milling, so a pressing-day figure and a picking-day figure are not the same measurement.
A chart position, not a quantity. Almost every accession here scored at or near 8, which says the fruit was picked at or past full starch conversion rather than that the cultivars are alike.
One harvest at one site. Soluble solids move several degrees between seasons and with crop load.
A permanganate figure and a Folin–Ciocalteu figure for the same juice can differ by a factor of two. Compare this reading with other permanganate readings, not with a Folin one.
Reaches CiderHQ through a transcription of a 1989 food-technology chapter, which itself printed unpublished 1980 work from the station. Unlike the chemistry in this dataset it is a measurement of the fruit rather than of the finished cider, so it is comparable with other fruit weights.
Measured on finished cider after a spontaneous fermentation, not on juice. It is not comparable with a juice figure for the same cultivar, and the gap between the two is not a disagreement between laboratories — it is what fermentation did.
Measured on finished cider after a spontaneous fermentation, not on juice. It is not comparable with a juice figure for the same cultivar, and the gap between the two is not a disagreement between laboratories — it is what fermentation did. The compiler notes these tannin figures run at roughly half the Long Ashton juice figures for the same cultivars, and cannot say how much of that is fermentation, how much is Geneva, and how much is method.

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.

WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial

Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center, Mount Vernon, Skagit Valley, Washington · 2002–2017 · Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center

Maritime, with cool summers and mild wet winters — the closest North American analogue to the English West Country, and the reason the programme planted European cider fruit here rather than east of the Cascades.

Mean full bloom: 1 May
Harvest: 21 September
Bloom density: 3.3 of 5
Productivity: 3.2 of 5
Growth habit: Semi Upright
Bearing: Tip Bearing
Alternate bearing: No
Blind wood: 3.5 of 5
Rootstocks: Bud 9

Filed here as sharp.

Juice characteristics measured on 250 mL of pressed juice; juice yield from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Bloom density, productivity and blind wood are the site’s own subjective 1–5 ratings. Figures are means across the seasons each cultivar was in the trial.

USDA-PGRU Malus germplasm characterisation

USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, in the Finger Lakes region of western New York State · 2017 · Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit

Humid continental, with cold winters and warm summers moderated by the Finger Lakes — a sharper seasonal swing than any of the European cider regions whose fruit the collection holds, and warm enough in late summer to bring acid down faster than a maritime autumn does.

Held as: PI 588971, held as “Roxbury Russet”

One harvest season. Fruit assessed for weight, diameter, starch pattern index on the Cornell 1–8 chart and flesh firmness by penetrometer; juice pressed and measured for soluble solids by refractometer, titratable acidity by titration to pH 8.2 as malic acid, pH by meter, total phenolics by Löwenthal permanganate titration as tannic acid equivalent, and glucose, fructose, sucrose and sorbitol by enzymatic assay.

NYSAES Geneva cider cultivar analyses

New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York · late 1970s · AVI / Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989, edited by Donald L. Downing (ISBN 0-442-22117-7)

Humid continental, with a hotter summer and a colder winter than any European cider region. The compiler suggests the growing conditions may be part of why the phenolic figures sit so far below the English ones, and is careful not to claim it.

Held as: Listed as “Roxbury Russet”

Analysis of finished cider after a spontaneous fermentation. Acid by titration as malic; pH by meter; tannin by an unstated method; fruit weight as a mean. The data appear to come from a single season, and the original work was unpublished.

In the orchard

Harvest window: Mid
Flowering: Not recorded
Vigour: Vigorous
Cropping: Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
Keeping: Very good — holds in store for weeks

Ripens through October in New England; commonly held a few weeks, which softens the acid and lifts the russet character.

Prone to alternating heavy and light years unless thinned.

A traditional winter keeper, which is a large part of why it survived three centuries of changing fashion.

Disease and pest susceptibility

Recorded susceptibility. Pressure differs enormously by region and by season, so these are tendencies rather than predictions.
Issue	Susceptibility	Note
Fire blight	moderate	—
Apple scab	moderate	The heavy russet masks scab lesions cosmetically, which matters less for pressing fruit than for market fruit.

Juice and pressing

Good sugar with firm acid — a genuine sharp rather than a merely tart dessert apple.
Low but not negligible tannin, giving a little grip at the finish.
A distinctive nutty russet aroma that survives fermentation better than most fruit aromas do.

How it is used

Pressed for New England farm cider from the colonial period onwards.
Kept through the winter for eating and cooking, with the surplus milled.
Used by modern New England producers as the acid and aroma component of heritage blends.

On its own

Established as a single-varietal cider

Bottled single-varietal by several New England producers. It has enough acid to structure itself and enough aroma to be recognisable, though it lacks the tannin to give real length.

About Roxbury Russet

Roxbury Russet has the longest continuous history of any apple raised in North America, and it earned that longevity by being useful in several ways at once: it kept until spring, it cooked, it ate acceptably once mellowed, and it pressed well. In a farm economy that had no way to specialise, that combination mattered more than excellence at any single job, and it is the reason this cultivar came through the nineteenth century when purpose-bred cider fruit such as Harrison did not.

The juice is a proper sharp. Cornell figures from New York fruit put the acid comfortably above the Long Ashton sharp threshold, and there is enough sugar behind it to ferment to a cider with body rather than a thin one. The russet skin carries a nutty, slightly pear-like aroma into the juice, and unusually that character persists through fermentation instead of being stripped out with the fruit esters.

Its weaknesses are orchard weaknesses rather than juice weaknesses. It biennially crops without thinning, and it takes fire blight seriously enough to matter in the mid-Atlantic and the Midwest — a hazard that dominates North American orchard planning and is very nearly absent from English cider-fruit description, because the pathogen is not established in Britain to the same degree.

For a modern maker, the practical value of Roxbury Russet is that it is available. Much of the argument about which heritage cultivars the American revival should be built on is really an argument about which ones survived, and this is one that did, in nurseries and in old orchards, without needing to be rescued.

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

The Roxbury origin is carried consistently by early American pomology and by the collections. The frequently repeated precise date of raising is not supported, and this record does not give one.

Other names this fruit is known by. Each is a name for the same cultivar, not a separate one — which is why none of them has a page of its own.
Name	Kind	Note
Boston Russet	Regional name	New England. Used interchangeably in nineteenth-century Massachusetts nursery listings.
Putnam Russet	Regional name	Ohio and the Western Reserve. The name it travelled under when New England settlers carried it west.
Sylvan Russet	Historic spelling

Why it matters

The oldest named apple cultivar of North American origin still in cultivation, on the usual reading of the record.
One of the small number of pre-Prohibition cultivars that survived in commerce rather than in collections, which is why the revival could reach it easily.

Related cultivars

Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.

Often confused with
Golden Russet
Both are American russets used for cider, and the bare word russet in an American cider context is ambiguous between them. They are distinct cultivars with different acid and different sugar.

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.

Styles it is characteristic of

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.

Why is golden russet used for cider — Because it carries more sugar than almost anything else in the New England repertoire. A late-1970s Geneva analysis of finished cider from it gave 17.0 degrees Brix at pressing, the highest in that table, alongside 0.55 per cent acid.
How do you blend cider
What does fresh-cut apple mean in a cider tasting note — The smell of a cut apple surface, produced within seconds of the fruit tissue being broken by six-carbon aldehydes released from membrane fats.
How long can apples be kept before pressing
Why does cider smell of apple skin
Is single variety cider better than a blend — Neither is inherently better and CiderHQ does not rank them. A single varietal shows one cultivar’s character and depends entirely on that fruit being balanced; a blend is how most makers reach balance deliberately.

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.

Cider, Hard and Sweet: History, Traditions, and Making Your Own
Ben Watson, The Countryman Press, first edition 1999; third edition 2013 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: first published 1999 by The Countryman Press, with five editions recorded and a 2008 printing scanned by the Internet Archive as ciderhardsweethi0000benw. The scan is access-restricted to the print-disabled collection. The site had registered this without a year; it now carries one, and the first-edition date matters because a general trade book on cider written in 1999 predates almost the whole of the North American cider revival it is sometimes cited about.
Cornell Cider Research and Extension programme
Cornell University, School of Integrative Plant Science · university · passage verified 2026-08-24
Runs cultivar trials in New York State and publishes juice chemistry for European cider varieties grown in a North American climate — the single most useful counterweight to treating English figures as universal.
GRIN-Global germplasm database — Malus and Pyrus
United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
Cider: Making, Using and Enjoying Sweet and Hard Cider
Annie Proulx and Lew Nichols, Storey Communications, 1997; first published as Sweet & Hard Cider by Garden Way, 1980 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library, and the verification changed what CiderHQ knows about it. The work first appeared in 1980 as Sweet & Hard Cider: Making It, Using It, & Enjoying It (Garden Way, Charlotte, Vermont) and was retitled for the 1997 Storey edition the site had registered; nine editions are recorded in total. That matters for a source cited on North American practice, because a passage in the 1980 text and a passage in the 1997 one are not interchangeable and neither is the 2003 revision. Two scans exist in the Internet Archive — sweethardciderma0000prou for the 1980 edition and cidermakingusing0000prou for the 1997 — both access-restricted to the lending library and the print-disabled collection, so neither is openable by retrieval.

Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.