Glossary · Sensory
Astringency
Also written mouth-drying, grip. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
A tactile sensation of drying, roughening and puckering in the mouth, caused by tannins binding and precipitating the proteins that lubricate the oral surfaces. It is a feeling, not a taste.
- Subject
- Sensory
- Also written
- mouth-drying, grip
In more detail
Because astringency is mechanical rather than gustatory, it builds with repeated sips as saliva is depleted, and it takes time to recover — which is why serious tasting of tannic ciders needs pauses and water. Long-chain procyanidins produce it most effectively; short chains taste bitter instead.
Astringency is routinely confused with bitterness, and the two are separately trainable. A useful test is location and timing: bitterness is a taste registered at the back of the tongue and fades; astringency is felt across the whole mouth and lingers.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Fault
Excessive astringency
A drying, roughening, mouth-puckering sensation that outstays its welcome, produced by larger phenolic polymers precipitating salivary proteins.
Chemistry
Procyanidins
The condensed tannins of cider fruit, whose chain length — not their quantity — decides whether the mouth registers bitterness or astringency.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Sensory
Bitterness
One of the basic tastes, detected by receptors chiefly on the posterior tongue. In cider it comes principally from short-chain procyanidins and from certain phenolic acids.
Chemistry
Tannin
In cider usage, the phenolic material responsible for bitterness and astringency, principally condensed tannins — procyanidins — built from catechin and epicatechin units.
Chemistry
Procyanidin
A chain of flavan-3-ol units — mainly epicatechin, with catechin as a terminal unit — and the principal tannin of cider apples. Chain length determines whether it tastes bitter or astringent.
Chemistry
Polymer
A molecule built from many repeating units. Polymeric procyanidins, long chains of flavan-3-ols, bind salivary proteins efficiently and are the fraction of cider tannin perceived as astringency rather than bitterness.
Sensory
Mouthfeel
The tactile impression of a drink in the mouth — viscosity, weight, texture, prickle and drying — as distinct from its taste and aroma.
Fruit
Bittersweet
In the Long Ashton classification, a cider apple low in acid — conventionally below about 0.45 per cent — and high in tannin, above about 0.2 per cent. Bittersweets form the structural base of West Country cider.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
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.
Peer-reviewed literature on apple phenolics and cider sensory perception
Various journals · peer-reviewed literature · registered as competent for this subject
Registered as a class rather than as one paper, because the mechanisms CiderHQ describes — tannin chain length driving the split between bitterness and astringency, salivary protein precipitation, enzymatic browning — are established across many studies rather than resting on any single one. Individual papers are cited where a specific number is quoted.
Washington State University cider research programme
Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center · university · passage verified 2026-08-24
The single most useful open cider dataset CiderHQ has found. The programme’s cultivar performance database gives juice chemistry, orchard behaviour, bloom and harvest timing and cider-maker tasting notes for 73 cultivars grown at one maritime site over fifteen years, and — unusually — publishes its classification thresholds alongside its figures, so the classification can be checked rather than taken on trust. It also states outright that its results diverge from the English ones. Read in full on 2026-08-24 and transcribed into `data/trials/wsu-mount-vernon.ts`; four published figures were found to be impossible and are withheld there with their reasons.
Impact of apple procyanidins on sensory perception in model cider (parts 1 and 2)
Symoneaux, Baron, Marnet, Bauduin and Chollet, LWT — Food Science and Technology 57:22–27; and Symoneaux, Chollet, Bauduin, Le Quéré and Baron, LWT 57:28–34 · peer-reviewed literature · retrieved 2026-08-24
A pair of companion papers that do the one experiment the tannin question needs: hold the acid, the sugar and the alcohol constant, vary only the procyanidin fraction, and ask a panel what changed. They are the reason CiderHQ can say that bitterness and astringency separate on chain length rather than on quantity, and that they do not separate the same way at every concentration. Both abstracts and both bibliographic records verified on 2026-08-24; the full texts are on ScienceDirect behind a paywall and were not opened. Part 2 is doi:10.1016/j.lwt.2014.01.007.