Comparison
English vs French cider
What makes French cidre different from English cider?
In short
French cidre, particularly in Normandy and Brittany, is built around keeving. Nutrients are stripped from the juice before fermentation, the yeast slows and stops of its own accord, and the cider retains fruit sugar and a low alcohol without anything being added or removed. Bottle conditioning then supplies the carbonation, and the sweetness scale — doux, demi-sec, brut — is a scale of how far that stalled ferment was allowed to go.
English practice ferments out. Blending across acid and tannin classes builds the structure, the cider is taken to dryness, and sweetness and carbonation are decided afterwards. Alcohol is correspondingly higher, and still cider is entirely normal.
Both traditions grow tannic fruit and both blend, so the fruit is not the dividing line. What differs is whether the drink is arrived at by restraining fermentation from the start or by completing it and then constructing the finish.
The two things being compared
Each side described in its own terms first, so the table below has something to hang on.
English cider
Blended tannic fruit fermented to dryness, with sweetness and carbonation set afterwards. Higher alcohol, and still as often as sparkling.
French *cidre*
Keeved juice fermented slowly to a natural stop, retaining fruit sugar at low alcohol, then bottle-conditioned. Sweetness is where the ferment halted.
Where they differ
Dimension by dimension. Where a row needs a qualification, it carries one rather than being simplified until it fits.
| Dimension | English cider | French *cidre* |
|---|---|---|
| How sweetness arises | Restored after a complete fermentation, or the ferment is arrested. | Unfermented fruit sugar left by a nutrient-starved ferment. |
| Alcohol | Higher, because the sugar was fermented. | Lower, because much of it never was. |
| Keeving | Practised, but not the organising principle. | Central, and assumed by the classification of the fruit itself. |
| Carbonation | Still, pétillant or sparkling; all normal. | Bottle-conditioned sparkle is the expectation. |
| Fruit classification | Four Long Ashton classes. | Five French families, with a separate very tannic amère. |
| Regulation | Regional PGIs, with a national duty definition doing much of the categorising. | AOC appellations specifying orchard zone, varieties, method and analysis. |
| Onward products | Cider brandy in Somerset, but not on the same scale. | Calvados and pommeau as established parallel products from the same orchards. |
| Clarity | Varies widely. | Typically bright, since keeving clarifies the juice before fermentation. |
The two systems at their most specific
The general rules hardly touch: an English cider needs only 35% apple or pear juice, counted with any concentrate and water that went into it, and stays under 8.5% alcohol for duty. The interesting comparison is between each country’s protected names, because that is where each tradition writes down what it thinks cider is.
For France that is an appellation such as Pays d’Auge, which specifies the fruit as well as the drink: at least 70% phenolic varieties, at most a quarter sharp ones, at least three varieties in every blend, and a cider that keeps at least 20 g/L of its own sugar under at least 1.5 bar of its own gas — while forbidding anything that changes the must’s natural sugar. For England it is one of the Three Counties names, such as Herefordshire Cider, which reads like a laboratory report: a strength band, an acid band, limits on volatile acidity and sulphite — and which permits sugar to be added before fermentation, the one thing the French appellation most firmly rules out.
| AOP Pays d’Auge | Herefordshire Cider PGI | |
|---|---|---|
| Fruit | At least 70% phenolic varieties, at most 25% sharp, at least three varieties | Apples, with or without up to 25% perry pear juice |
| Alcohol | At least 3.5% acquired and 6% total potential | 4.0–8.5% |
| Sugar | At least 20 g/L left in the bottle, the fruit’s own; nothing may change the must’s natural sugar | Chaptalisation permitted, to about 9.5% potential alcohol before final blending |
| Gas | At least 1.5 bar at 20 °C, from fermentation | Not prescribed |
| Analytical limits | Not in the passages read | Total acidity 40–60 mEq/L as malic; volatile acidity under 1.4 g/L; total SO₂ under 200 mg/L, free 40–60 mg/L |
| What is forbidden | Water, colouring, pasteurisation | Not in the passages read |
- Whole juice vs concentrate — how much concentrate each framework allows, side by side.
- Cidre du Pays d’Auge — the appellation in full.
When English cider is the relevant one
The circumstances in which this is the thing being described, rather than a reason to prefer it.
- The cider fermented out and its finish was constructed afterwards.
- You are describing West Country or Three Counties practice.
When French *cidre* is the relevant one
The circumstances in which this is the thing being described, rather than a reason to prefer it.
- The sweetness is unfermented fruit sugar from a keeved ferment.
- You are describing a Normandy or Breton appellation.
A misconception worth clearing up
This comparison exists partly because of the claim below, which is repeated often enough that most readers arrive holding it.
French cider is sweet because sugar is added to it.
What is actually the case: In the keeved tradition nothing is added. The juice is stripped of the nitrogen the yeast needs, so fermentation stops before the sugar is used up. The low alcohol and the sweetness are two consequences of the same mechanism.
Related comparisons
Distinctions that turn on the same thing, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Keeved vs fully fermented
Keeving strips nutrients out of the juice before fermentation so that the yeast starves before the sugar is gone, leaving natural sweetness; a fully fermented cider runs to dryness and is sweetened afterwards if at all.
Normandy vs Brittany
Two adjacent French cider regions with different emphases: Normandy’s appellations centre on keeved *cidre* and the calvados and pommeau built from it, while Brittany’s tradition runs to drier, more rustic cider with its own varieties and its own Cornouaille appellation.
English vs French classification
Both schemes sort cider fruit on acid and tannin, but the English one cuts it into four classes and the French into five, with a distinctly tannic *amère* family the English scheme has no name for.
English vs Spanish cider traditions
Two complete traditions with different premises: the English builds structure from tannic fruit and manages sweetness and carbonation; the Asturian and Basque build acidity and wild-ferment character and animate the drink at the moment of pouring.
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.
- What is keeving, and how does it differ from an ordinary fermentation — Keeving deliberately strips nitrogen out of the juice before fermentation so the yeast runs out of nutrient and stops with sugar still present. The result is naturally sweet without anything being added, where an ordinary fermentation runs to dryness and any sweetness has to be put back.
- Why is spanish cider so different from english cider — Asturian and Basque cider is fermented dry, is usually not carbonated, and is poured from a height to aerate it in the glass. English cider is more often sweetened, more often carbonated and rarely poured that way, and the two traditions use different fruit and different classification systems.
- How does the french classification of cider apples differ from the english one — The English scheme cuts fruit four ways on acid and tannin; the French scheme cuts it five ways and separates amère from douce-amère, a distinction English has no word for. The French thresholds are also stated in grams per litre with acidity as sulphuric acid, so the numbers do not compare directly.
- What is the difference between normandy and breton cider
Where to go next
- All comparisons — The rest of the pairs, grouped by what kind of difference is at stake.
- Glossary — Either term on its own, defined without a second thing to hold it against.
- Learn about cider — The background these pages assume, written from the beginning.
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.
Institut national de l’origine et de la qualité (INAO)
INAO · regulator · passage verified 2026-08-24
The Cidre Pays d’Auge cahier des charges was read in full on 2026-08-24, in the version homologated by arrêté of 17 January 2026 and published in the Journal officiel on 21 January. That qualification is not decoration. A revision adopted by the Comité national on 10 September 2025 is currently under the procédure nationale d’opposition, is clearly marked as not prejudging the final text, and specifies carbonation differently from the text in force — as grams of CO2 per litre rather than as a minimum pressure in bar. A summary citing the draft would have put a figure on the page that no producer is held to. CiderHQ records the operative text and says which one it is.
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.
The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing
Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24
Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.
UK protected geographical food and drink names register
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs · government · passage verified 2026-08-25
The register itself is an index; the substance is in the product specification attached to each entry as a PDF. Eight cider and perry specifications were downloaded and read on 2026-08-24 — the six Three Counties names and the two Welsh ones. Reading them settled a question CiderHQ had previously described in the abstract and got wrong: the Three Counties specifications state a composition table, not a minimum juice content. The Traditional Welsh Perry specification was re-read on 2026-08-25 for the comparison with Austrian fruit-wine law, and its prohibition list transcribed in full: the two instruments turn out to regulate opposite things, one composition and one technique.
Alcoholic Products Technical Guide, section 2 — alcoholic products (formerly Excise Notice 162)
HM Revenue & Customs · regulator · passage verified 2026-08-24
What may be called cider or perry for UK duty purposes. The substantive text now lives in section 2 of the Alcoholic Products Technical Guide rather than in the notice itself, and the passages below were read there. The widely repeated "35% juice" figure checks out — but note two things the figure alone hides: it is a tax threshold rather than a quality standard, and concentrate and dilution both count towards it.