Comparison
Perry vs poiré
Is poiré the same as perry?
In short
Poiré is the French word for perry, and both mean fermented pear juice. But the traditions behind the two words differ as much as the cider traditions do.
English perry, in the Three Counties and Monmouthshire, is made from local perry pear cultivars and is generally fermented out, ranging from bone dry to lightly sweet, and is as often still as sparkling. Its character comes from the fruit and from the sorbitol the fruit leaves behind.
Norman poiré, and Poiré Domfront in particular, is keeved. Fermentation stops early, leaving substantial fruit sugar at a low alcohol, and the perry is bottle-conditioned to a fine sparkle. The appellation requires a large majority of pears and is built around the tall standard pear trees of the Domfrontais.
The two things being compared
Each side described in its own terms first, so the table below has something to hang on.
Perry
English and Welsh fermented pear juice from perry pear cultivars, usually fermented out, still or sparkling, dry to lightly sweet.
*Poiré*
Norman perry, keeved so that fermentation stops early, leaving natural sweetness at low alcohol, then bottle-conditioned.
Where they differ
Dimension by dimension. Where a row needs a qualification, it carries one rather than being simplified until it fits.
| Dimension | Perry | *Poiré* |
|---|---|---|
| Sweetness | Dry to lightly sweet, with sorbitol contributing whatever the fruit left. | Distinctly sweet, from fruit sugar the keeved ferment never reached. |
| Alcohol | Higher, from a completed fermentation. | Low, because the ferment stopped early. |
| Keeving | Not the tradition. | Central, and required in practice by the style. |
| Carbonation | Still or sparkling, both traditional. | Bottle-conditioned sparkle. |
| Fruit | Three Counties and Welsh perry pear cultivars. | Domfrontais cultivars on tall standard trees. |
| Protection | PGIs for Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Welsh perry. | Poiré Domfront, an appellation with a high minimum pear proportion. |
| Orchard formBoth traditions depend on very large, very long-lived pear trees, which is why both face the same conservation problem. | Standard trees, many of great age. | Standard trees, likewise, and part of the appellation’s identity. |
Notes under a dimension name qualify the whole row, not one column.
When Perry is the relevant one
The circumstances in which this is the thing being described, rather than a reason to prefer it.
- The perry is English or Welsh and fermented out.
- You are describing a Three Counties or Monmouthshire producer.
When *Poiré* is the relevant one
The circumstances in which this is the thing being described, rather than a reason to prefer it.
- The perry is Norman, keeved, sweet and low in alcohol.
- You are describing the Domfront appellation.
Related comparisons
Distinctions that turn on the same thing, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Cider vs perry
Cider is fermented from apples and perry from pears — but the pear brings sorbitol, citric acid and stone cells, which change how the drink ferments, how sweet it finishes and how it must be handled.
Perry vs pear cider
Perry is fermented pear juice, traditionally from perry pears; "pear cider" is a marketing term that arrived later and is often applied to pear-flavoured cider or to dessert-pear juice fermentations.
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.
Perry pear vs eating pear
Perry pears are small, hard, tannic and frequently inedible raw; eating pears are bred for soft flesh and sweetness, and make a thin, low-tannin perry.
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.
- Is pear cider the same as perry — Not necessarily. Perry traditionally means fermented juice from perry pear cultivars, while pear cider is a marketing term that has also been used for apple cider flavoured with pear, and neither name is legally defined in the United Kingdom.
- 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.
- What is the difference between cider and perry — Cider is fermented apple juice and perry is fermented pear juice. Perry is lower in tannin, higher in unfermentable sorbitol so it tastes faintly sweet even when dry, and considerably harder to make.
- Can you make perry from ordinary pears — You can, and the result is usually thin. Eating pears are low in tannin and in acid, so they give a soft perry without the structure that perry pear cultivars provide.
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.
National Perry Pear Centre, Hartpury · specialist organisation · passage verified 2026-08-24
Read on 2026-08-24 — and the address CiderHQ had registered, perrypears.co.uk, is no longer the Centre at all. It fails the TLS handshake over https, and over plain http it resolves to a Sedo domain-parking page: an earlier pass in this sprint recorded it as retrieved on the strength of an HTTP 200, which was wrong, and the correction is the point. The Centre publishes at nationalperrypearcentre.org.uk. It is the closest thing British perry has to an identity authority: it holds at least two examples of most known varieties, states that the DNA of most of them has been determined and is used as an aid to identification, and publishes a variety register with synonym lists. Its 121-variety register is transcribed into the perry pear records, including the nineteen names it shows being claimed by more than one variety.
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.
Three Counties Cider and Perry Association
TCCPA · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Perry Pears
L. C. Luckwill and A. Pollard (eds), published for the National Fruit and Cider Institute by the University of Bristol, 1963 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25 · covers 1963
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library, which records the work as Luckwill, 1963, published for the National Fruit and Cider Institute by the University of Bristol. The catalogue entry names Luckwill alone where the standard citation names Luckwill and Pollard as joint editors; CiderHQ keeps both names and records the discrepancy rather than silently following one catalogue. This is the foundational descriptive work on English perry pears and the ancestor of most later variety lists. No copy was opened: it is sixty years old, out of print, and held in research libraries rather than in open digital collections.