Glossary · Culture
Kelterei
German. Kept in its own language here rather than translated into the nearest English word, because the nearest English word is usually cut on a different axis.
Definition
A German pressing works: the business that mills and presses fruit and makes juice or Apfelwein, from keltern, to press.
- Subject
- Culture
- Language
- German
In more detail
The word describes a business rather than a building or a drink, and it covers more ground than any English equivalent. A Kelterei mills and presses fruit and makes juice, Apfelwein or both, and in Hessen the same firm frequently presses fruit that customers bring in — Lohnmosten, wage-pressing — as well as fruit it has bought. That arrangement kept a great many small orchards economically alive, because a household with twenty trees and no press could still turn its crop into something that kept.
The pressing works is therefore the hinge of the German and Austrian orchard landscape in a way the English cider farm is not. English cider tradition concentrated pressing on the farm that grew the fruit; the Streuobst tradition separated growing from pressing, and the Kelterei is the institution that separation requires.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Cider
Apfelwein
German apple wine: cider fermented dry from culinary and wild apples, usually still or lightly sparkling, sharply acidic and served in the Frankfurt region as a regional speciality.
Cider
Most
In German-speaking Europe, either fresh fruit juice or the fermented drink made from it. Which one it means is settled by the country you are standing in, and in Austria it is settled by statute.
Cider
Süssmost
Unfermented apple or pear juice, literally "sweet must". In Switzerland it is the standard term for the soft drink pressed from cider fruit.
Cider
Cider house
A building or licensed premises where cider is made or sold. In the West Country it meant the farm’s making and storage building; in modern usage it usually means a bar specialising in 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.
Hochschule Geisenheim University — beverage technology
Hochschule Geisenheim · university · retrieved 2026-08-24
German beverage-technology research covering apple wine and fruit juice processing, including the enzymology of clarification.
European Cider and Fruit Wine Association (AICV)
AICV · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24