Glossary · Perry
Pear cider
Definition
A trade name used from the 2000s for pear-flavoured drinks and for pear ferments made from dessert pear juice or concentrate, distinct from perry made with perry pears.
- Subject
- Perry
In more detail
The phrase is contested. Producers of traditional perry object that it borrowed the market that the word perry had built while describing a different product, typically fermented from imported dessert-pear concentrate. Others argue that "perry" was unfamiliar to consumers and that the plainer phrase simply describes the fruit used.
No jurisdiction reserves either word for a defined composition, so the terms cannot be relied on as a guide to what is in the bottle.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Perry
Perry
A fermented alcoholic drink made from the juice of pears, and specifically from perry pears rather than dessert pears. It is not cider made with pears added: it is a separate drink with its own fruit, chemistry and problems.
Perry
Perry pear
A pear cultivar grown for fermentation rather than for eating, characterised by high tannin, high acid or both, small size, and flesh too hard and astringent for the table.
Cider
Concentrate
Apple juice from which most of the water has been removed, usually by vacuum evaporation, leaving a syrup of about 70 degrees Brix that is stable, transportable and reconstituted before use.
Cider
Cider from concentrate
Cider fermented from apple juice concentrate that has been reconstituted with water, rather than from juice pressed and fermented in the same season.
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.
WPCS · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Documents Welsh cider and perry traditions and has done substantial work identifying and conserving Welsh perry pear cultivars that were close to being lost.
National Association of Cider Makers
NACM · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
The UK trade association. Useful for industry-agreed definitions and for the voluntary labelling standards its members work to. A trade body has an interest in how its product is described, so CiderHQ cites it for what the industry says about itself rather than for neutral scientific claims.
CAMRA cider and perry standards
Campaign for Real Ale · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Opened on 2026-08-24. Registered for the consumer-campaigning vocabulary — "real cider", "full juice" — which is advocacy language rather than legal definition, and is recorded as such wherever CiderHQ uses it.