Cider apple
Worcester Pearmain
A bright red early English dessert apple with a marked strawberry aroma, pressed for that aroma and for early-season acid.
Also written Worcester, Worcester Pearmain Apple.
- Classification
- Sharp — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Early (September)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Aroma, Early season
- Origin
- Swan Pool, near Worcester
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
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.
A mild sharp when pressed: moderate acid, negligible tannin. Placed on description.
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 | Moderate | |
| Tannin | Negligible | |
| Sugar | High | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | None | |
| Aroma | Pronounced | |
| Body | Light |
Description of an aromatic early dessert apple, with aroma banded high on its well-known strawberry character. These bands were authored from description; published analyses of this fruit have since been transcribed onto the record from named trial programmes and are shown above. The bands are not derived from those figures, which is why this profile is marked as classified rather than measured.
Contributes a distinct strawberry aroma and modest acid, and no structure at all.
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.
- Strawberry — A soft red-fruit note from furanone and ester chemistry, arising in fermentation or from added fruit.
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.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total acid3 readings, spanning 0.280–0.500 % w/v | 0.500 % w/v | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, Somerset, England | 1905–1975Historic analysis | Andrew Lea |
| 0.450 % w/v | England — the source does not name the orchards | 1922–1977Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology | |
| 0.280 % w/v | England — the source does not name the orchards | 1922–1977Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology | |
| Total tannin3 readings, spanning 0.090–0.120 % w/v | 0.120 % w/v | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, Somerset, England | 1905–1975Historic analysis | Andrew Lea |
| 0.090 % w/v | England — the source does not name the orchards | 1922–1977Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology | |
| 0.110 % w/v | England — the source does not name the orchards | 1922–1977Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology | |
| Specific gravity2 readings, spanning 1.047–1.050 SG | 1.050 SG | England — the source does not name the orchards | 1922–1977Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology |
| 1.047 SG | England — the source does not name the orchards | 1922–1977Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology | |
| pH | 3.60 pH | England — the source does not name the orchards | 1922–1977Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology |
3 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
- Titration with alkali, reported as malic acid. Composite figure across many seasons; the source states neither the sample count nor the year of any individual analysis.
- Löwenthal permanganate titration, reported as tannic acid equivalent. Composite figure across many seasons; the source states neither the sample count nor the year of any individual analysis.
- Published in the two-figure form the table uses (a printed 51 meaning 1.051) and written here in full.
- Titration, reported as malic acid, on juice from freshly harvested fruit.
- Method not stated in the compilation; the Long Ashton work behind it used Löwenthal permanganate titration.
- Meter on juice from freshly harvested fruit.
- A composite of Long Ashton analyses reaching CiderHQ through three hands: the station’s own work, a printed compilation (Bulmer’s Pomona, 1987, and Beech and Carr, 1977), and a transcription of that compilation. CiderHQ has seen only the transcription.
- A composite of Long Ashton analyses reaching CiderHQ through three hands: the station’s own work, a printed compilation (Bulmer’s Pomona, 1987, and Beech and Carr, 1977), and a transcription of that compilation. CiderHQ has seen only the transcription. A permanganate figure. It is not comparable with a Folin–Ciocalteu total-phenolics figure for the same fruit, and the two can differ by a factor of two.
- A National Association of Cider Makers compilation crediting three bodies of work — MAFF/ADAS acidity and pH from freshly harvested fruit, Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties reported in 1977, and the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. The compilation does not say which row came from which, so no row can be dated more precisely than the span of the three.
- A National Association of Cider Makers compilation crediting three bodies of work — MAFF/ADAS acidity and pH from freshly harvested fruit, Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties reported in 1977, and the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. The compilation does not say which row came from which, so no row can be dated more precisely than the span of the three. Several cultivars appear more than once in this table under sample numbers, and the repeats are far apart: Bramley’s acid is 1.21, 1.05 and 1.43 per cent in three rows. Read any single row as one pressing of one parcel of fruit.
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.
Long Ashton composite cider apple analyses
Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England · 1905–1975 · Andrew Lea
Maritime and mild, with wet autumns and few hard frosts — the climate the English cider cultivars were selected in, and the reason their acid and tannin figures here are the ones the rest of the world has spent a century comparing its own fruit against.
- Held as
- Listed as “Worcester Pearmain”, dessert season
Filed here as mild sharp, though the juice measured at this site falls in the sharp quadrant of the site’s own thresholds.
Worcester Pearmain carries one class by tradition and measures as another here. Neither reading is an error. A class assigned on acid and tannin describes fruit grown somewhere, and this is somewhere else.
Freshly expressed juice, not finished cider. Acid by straight titration against alkali, reported as malic acid; tannin by Löwenthal permanganate titration, reported as tannic acid equivalent. Composite figures across seventy years of analyses: the source gives neither a sample count nor the year of any individual reading.
Typical English apple juice analyses
England — the compilation does not name the orchards · 1922–1977 · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
English fruit-growing country, and no closer than that: the source gives neither site nor season for any individual row, which is a real limit on what the figures can be asked to do.
- Held as
- Listed as “Worcester Pearmain”, sample 1
Juice from freshly harvested fruit. Acidity and pH credited to MAFF/ADAS; the remainder to Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties (1977) and to the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. Specific gravity is printed in a two-figure form and written out in full here.
Typical English apple juice analyses
England — the compilation does not name the orchards · 1922–1977 · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
English fruit-growing country, and no closer than that: the source gives neither site nor season for any individual row, which is a real limit on what the figures can be asked to do.
- Held as
- Listed as “Worcester Pearmain 2”, sample 2
Juice from freshly harvested fruit. Acidity and pH credited to MAFF/ADAS; the remainder to Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties (1977) and to the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. Specific gravity is printed in a two-figure form and written out in full here.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Early
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
Late August into September. Press it straight from the tree if the acid is wanted.
Crops heavily and regularly, and is unusual in tending to fruit on the tips of shoots.
Mid-season flowering, and a reliable pollinator.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
| Powdery mildew | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Moderate acid
- Negligible tannin
- Strong strawberry aroma
How it is used
- A long-established English early dessert apple
- Pressed by cidermakers for aroma and early-season juice
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Occasionally bottled alone for the aroma. It is short of acid and has no tannin, so the result is fragrant and slight.
About Worcester Pearmain
Worcester Pearmain is the source of an aroma that runs through a whole line of British apples. The strawberry note that makes Discovery and Katy recognisable comes from here, and it is unusual enough in apples that its presence in a cider is effectively a signature.
As a cider component it is one-dimensional in a useful way: aroma, a little acid, no tannin, no body. It goes into early blends and occasionally into varietal bottlings, and it is used in small proportion because more of it does not add anything the first ten per cent has not already provided.
The tree has an orchard peculiarity worth mentioning. Worcester Pearmain tends to fruit on the tips of the previous year’s shoots rather than on spurs, which means the standard spur-pruning regime removes the crop. It is a well-known trap for anyone pruning it like a conventional apple.
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
Raised near Worcester and introduced by a Worcester nursery in the 1870s. The nursery introduction is documented; the raising itself rests on later account.
Parentage · not established
Often given as a seedling of Devonshire Quarrenden, which would account for the strawberry aroma. Not established.
Related cultivars
Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.
Parentage
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.
Discovery
A very early red dessert apple raised in Essex, used by cidermakers to start the season with something aromatic and sharp.
Katy
A Swedish-raised dessert apple widely grown in Britain and one of the most used dessert cultivars in modern British single-varietal cider.
Cheddar Cross
A very early sharp raised at Long Ashton, giving acid at the start of the season when little else is ready.
James Grieve
A Scottish-raised dual-purpose apple of clean, bright acid, widely grown in Britain and pressed for acid and freshness in modern cider.
Sops in Wine
An old English name for red-fleshed apples that stain the juice, applied to several distinct cultivars and identifying none of them reliably.
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.
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
- How should a cider tree be pruned
- How is supermarket cider made
- What are the three counties in cider — Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire — the block of country where England’s cider and, above all, its perry have historically concentrated.
- Why does cider smell of strawberry
- What is herefordshire 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.
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.
NIAB (incorporating East Malling Research)
NIAB · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
East Malling developed the M-series apple rootstocks that determine tree size in essentially every modern orchard, cider orchards included. The authority CiderHQ uses for rootstock behaviour.
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.
Expert reference Evidence standard for this record. What that means.