Cider apple
Slack-ma-Girdle
A Devon cider apple with one of the more memorable names in English pomology, giving a mild, sweet juice and sitting awkwardly on the sweet–bittersweet boundary.
Also written Slack-my-Girdle, Slack ma Girdle, Slackmagirdle, Slack My Girdle.
- Classification
- Sweet — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Sugar and body, Bulk juice
- Origin
- Devon
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
How it is classified
Classified under more than one system. The systems use different thresholds and were built for different fruit, so the answers can legitimately differ — that is a fact about the schemes, not a contradiction.
Long Ashton classification
Sweet
Low acid and low tannin. Fruit that contributes sugar, alcohol and body but little structure or sharpness.
Basis: Below about 0.45% w/v acid and below about 0.2% w/v tannin.
Placed as a sweet, with tannin below the threshold.
Long Ashton classification
Bittersweet
Low acid, high tannin. The class that has no real equivalent in dessert fruit and that defines West Country cider.
Basis: Below about 0.45% w/v acid and above about 0.2% w/v tannin.
Recorded because descriptions differ. The fruit sits close to the tannin cut-off and has been called a mild bittersweet as often as a sweet; presenting one as settled would overstate the evidence.
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 | Very low | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Long Ashton acid and tannin ranges, with a wide tannin band because the fruit sits on the class boundary.
Gives sugar and softness with a trace of tannin, and is easily lost in a blend.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Slack-ma-Girdle, 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
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.
Total acid0.120–0.240 % w/v
Long Ashton, Somerset, England, Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985 · Titration of pressed juice, reported as malic acid · National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol
Historic single-site fruit, low in acid under any reading.
How much acid the juice contains, conventionally reported as malic acid. Measured in percent weight per volume.
Total tannin0.140–0.240 % w/v
Long Ashton, Somerset, England, Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985 · National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol
Straddles the classification threshold. This is the direct reason two classes are recorded for this cultivar.
The phenolic fraction responsible for bitterness and astringency. Measured in percent weight per volume.
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.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
October.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Low acid
- Light tannin on the class boundary
- Good sugar
How it is used
- A sweet component of Devon farmhouse blends
- Grown as a farm cider apple across east Devon
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Mild in every direction, and short of acid. Not a fruit to ferment alone.
About Slack-ma-Girdle
Slack-ma-Girdle is better known for its name than for its juice, which is a fair reflection of the fruit. It is a mild Devon apple with low acid, modest tannin and decent sugar, and it belonged to the era when a farm planted whatever grew well and made cider from all of it. Its contribution to a blend is bulk and softness.
Two explanations for the name circulate. One is a joke about a drinker loosening his belt; the other claims a Celtic phrase corrupted by English ears. Neither has any evidence, both are repeated confidently, and the honest position is that the name is old, Devon, and unexplained. The spelling has never settled either — "ma" and "my" both appear in nineteenth-century records and there is no basis for preferring one.
Analytically it sits on the sweet–bittersweet line, which is why two classifications appear on this record. As with Hangdown, the practical difference is negligible and the illustrative value is high: this is a fruit whose class depends on the season it was analysed in.
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
A Devon cider apple of unrecorded origin. The name is usually explained as a joke about how much of the cider a drinker could take, or alternatively as a corruption of a Celtic phrase; both explanations are folk etymology and neither has evidence behind it.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Slack-my-Girdle | Historic spelling | The commonest alternative form. "Ma" and "my" are used interchangeably in Devon records and neither is more correct. |
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.
Hangdown
A Devon mild bittersweet named for its weeping habit, sitting close enough to the tannin threshold that sources place it on both sides of it.
Golden Delicious
A West Virginia chance seedling of about 1890 that became one of the most planted and most bred-from apples in history — high in sugar, low in acid, and by volume one of the largest single inputs to cider worldwide.
Somerset Redstreak
A mild bittersweet planted at very large scale in the late twentieth century for its heavy, regular cropping on bush trees, and a fruit whose commercial importance exceeds its character.
Fuji
A Japanese cross of Ralls Janet and Red Delicious released in 1962, exceptionally sweet and dense and very low in acid, now among the most planted apples in the world and a very large contributor of sugar to modern cider.
Gala
A New Zealand cross of Kidd’s Orange Red and Golden Delicious that became one of the most planted apples in the world — sweet, low in acid, and a very large but structurally unhelpful contributor to modern cider.
Court Royal
A large, pale West Country sweet giving a mild, sugary juice, historically grown as much for the size of the crop as for what it contributed to a blend.
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 scrumpy — Scrumpy is an informal West Country word for strong, still, usually cloudy farmhouse cider. It has no legal definition, so it describes a style expectation rather than a guaranteed method.
- What is a traditional west country cider blend — Predominantly bittersweet fruit for body and tannin, with a proportion of sharp fruit for acidity and sometimes a smaller share of bittersharps for both. The exact composition varied by farm and by what was in the orchard.
- Why is cider made in the west country — Because the climate suits apples and disappoints wheat and barley: mild, wet winters, heavy soils and a long growing season. Where grain was hard to grow, orchards took its place and cider took beer’s.
- Is dorset a cider county — On the eastern edge of one. Dorset carried a working farm cider tradition rather than a commercial industry, and its cultivars — Buttery Door, Melcombe Horsey and others — are a distinct local group rather than West Country imports.
- What is devon cider
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.
Long Ashton Research Station cider fruit analyses
National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol · research institute · registered as competent for this subject · covers 1903–2003
The foundational body of cider-fruit science in English. Long Ashton produced the acid-and-tannin classification that divides cider apples into sweet, sharp, bittersweet and bittersharp, and analysed hundreds of cultivars grown at its Somerset site. Its figures are historic measurements of specific fruit at a specific place, not universal constants — a distinction CiderHQ preserves in every measurement record that cites it.
A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset
Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001. ISBN 9781874336877 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001, ISBN 9781874336877. The author was Long Ashton’s cider pomologist, which is why this work is registered for Somerset cultivar identity at all — it is the nearest thing to a successor to the station’s own descriptions. No copy was opened. Not digitised in any open collection.
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.