Cider apple
Saint Martin
A very late Norman bittersweet named for the feast of Saint Martin on 11 November, which is roughly when it is expected to be ready.
Also written Saint-Martin, Pomme de Saint Martin.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — French cider apple families
- Harvest
- Very late (November onwards)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Late season, Sugar and body, Bittersweet base
- Origin
- Normandy
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 5
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- 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.
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 | Moderate | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | Moderate | |
| Astringency | Noticeable | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Full |
French bittersweet placement, with the caveat that the name is used loosely enough that a single classification may not describe every tree grown as Saint Martin.
Rich and soft with a mild bitterness, the sugar noticeably high because the fruit has hung so long.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Saint Martin, 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 Saint Martin. 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
- Very late
- Flowering
- Pollination group 5
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
Around Martinmas, and often later. The extended hang is what builds the sugar.
Juice and pressing
- High sugar from a long hang
- Moderate tannin
- Very low acid
How it is used
- Raising gravity in late-pressed Norman blends
- Cider held for winter drinking and for distillation
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Its high sugar would carry a single-varietal ferment, but the fruit is too scattered and too loosely identified for anyone to make a habit of it.
About Saint Martin
Saint Martin is a harvest date wearing the disguise of a cultivar name. Martinmas, 11 November, was one of the fixed points of the northern European agricultural year — the end of the harvest, the traditional day for slaughtering and salting, and in cider country the last realistic date for getting fruit off the tree. An apple named for it is being described by when it is ready, not by who raised it.
The practical value of such fruit was real. A very late apple accumulates sugar through weeks of cool autumn weather, arrives when the mill has finished with everything else, and stores until midwinter. In an orchard economy where a farm pressed its own fruit over a long season with one press, that sequencing mattered more than fine distinctions of tannin.
The identity is correspondingly loose. Trees grown as Saint Martin in different parts of Normandy are not certainly the same clone, and a classification statement about the name should be read as a statement about a type. CiderHQ records one entry because the alternative — a record per local tree — would be worse, but the uncertainty is genuine and is stated here rather than buried.
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
Saints’ days were the common way of fixing agricultural dates before printed calendars were general, and several unrelated fruits across Europe carry saints’ names for the same reason. This is a Norman one; it is not certain that every tree sold under the name is the same cultivar.
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.
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.
Tardive Forestier
A late Norman bittersweet named for its season and for the family that grew it, planted where a mill needed fruit after the main crop was through.
Douce Moën
The workhorse of Breton cider orchards: a large, pale, very low-acid bittersweet that crops heavily, presses generously, and carries more Breton cider than any other single cultivar.
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.
Reine des Pommes
A dark red Norman bittersweet with a grand name and a solid reputation, imported into England alongside Michelin and Médaille d’Or and analysed there as a bittersweet of some quality.
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.
- When are cider apples harvested — In the northern hemisphere the cider harvest runs from about September to November, with late bittersweets such as Dabinett and Vilberie coming in last. Cider fruit is generally picked riper than dessert fruit, and often gathered from the ground.
- 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
- What does sweating apples mean — Sweating is holding picked fruit in a heap or store for days or weeks before milling, so it softens, loses water and gains sugar concentration. Perry pears in particular are usually held until they yield to the thumb.
- 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.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.