Xuanina

How it is classified

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.

Moderate in both acid and phenolics on the published figures, which sits awkwardly with the acid classification the same source assigns.

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.

• 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 Xuanina 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.

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.

In the orchard

Harvest window

Very late

Flowering

Pollination group 2

Vigour

Moderate

Cropping

Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate

Keeping

Poor — mill soon after picking

The Consejo Regulador records ripening in the second ten days of November (“2ª decena de noviembre”).

Early-flowering, which exposes it to late spring frost in inland Asturian valleys.

Disease and pest susceptibility

Juice and pressing

• Published acidity of 2,7 g/L, which is at the mild end of the Asturian range rather than the acid end
• Phenolics of 0,8 g/L, at the regional floor
• The published figures and the published block do not sit comfortably together

How it is used

• The first pressing of the Asturian season
• Acid correction where the main crop is running sweet
• On the permitted-variety list of the Asturian protected designation

On its own

About Xuanina

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.

Related cultivars

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

• Traditional blend partner

  Ernestina

  The early sweet cultivar pressed alongside it to supply the gravity it lacks.

• Similar role

  Regona

  The late sharp that does the same job at the other end of the season.

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.

• Blanquina

  A pale-skinned Asturian cultivar of high reputation, and — like Raxao, with which it is usually named — an acid-block fruit rather than a semi-acid one.

• Txalaka

  The most widely recognised Basque cider apple: a hard, sharp, late cultivar from Gipuzkoa that supplies much of the acid backbone of *sagardoa*.

• Raxao

  One of the two Asturian cultivars named whenever a producer describes a serious blend, and an acid rather than semi-acid fruit: 5,3 g/L against only 0,8 of polyphenols.

• Fuentes

  The second-most acid cultivar the Asturian designation characterises: a vigorous, heavy-cropping tree whose juice runs to 6,2 g/L of acid, and which and which sits at the opposite end of the register from the sweet block.

• Limón Montés

  A yellow Asturian sharp whose name — “mountain lemon” — describes both its colour and the citric edge of its acidity.

• Prieta

  A dark-skinned Asturian cultivar in the acid block at 4,8 g/L, whose phenolic content is ordinary rather than the bittersharp weight it was once credited with.

Styles it is characteristic of

• Sidra natural

  The still, dry, unfiltered cider of Asturias and the Basque Country, wild-fermented from local high-acid fruit and poured from a height to raise a momentary sparkle.

Where it grows

• Asturias
• Asturian coastal comarca

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.
• 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 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.
• What is sidra natural — Sidra natural is the still, dry, unfiltered cider of Asturias and the Basque Country, bottled without added carbonation and poured from a height to rouse it. It is tart, funky and made to be drunk in small measures poured one at a time.
• What is asturian cider
• Where in asturias is most cider made — In the narrow coastal lowland between Gijón and the Sella, where orchard density is highest. Asturian cider is a coastal drink: the mountains behind are too high and too cold for the orchards.

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.

• Servicio Regional de Investigación y Desarrollo Agroalimentario (SERIDA)

  Principado de Asturias · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24

  The Asturian regional agri-food research service, and the technical authority behind the Asturian cultivar classification and the analysis of sidra natural. SERIDA’s own site has not been opened; what CiderHQ has read is SERIDA’s varietal characterisation as republished by the Consejo Regulador of DOP Sidra de Asturias, which credits it explicitly. The Asturian measurements therefore cite the Consejo rather than SERIDA — citing the body that did the work, at a document CiderHQ has not seen, would be exactly the kind of borrowed authority this register exists to prevent.

• Denominación de Origen Protegida Sidra de Asturias

  Consejo Regulador de la DOP Sidra de Asturias · designation authority · passage verified 2026-08-24

  The regulating council for Asturian cider. Read on 2026-08-24, and it turned out to carry far more than a permitted-variety list: an agronomic and technological characterisation of each admitted variety, with total acidity, total polyphenols, vigour, flowering, ripening, cropping and susceptibility to fungal disease. The characterisation is credited to SERIDA’s fruit-research programme. Two things it settles are corrections to what CiderHQ previously held: Asturias sorts cider fruit into nine technological blocks rather than five, and it publishes acidity as sulphuric acid rather than malic. The figures are transcribed into `data/trials/serida-asturias.ts` and cite this source, because this is where they were read.