Glossary · Fruit
Speierling
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.
Also written service tree, Sorbus domestica. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
The true service tree, Sorbus domestica — a tree, not an apple and not a rowan. Its small astringent fruit is added in small quantity to Hessian Apfelwein, and on a German label the word is now a flavour indication rather than a statement that the fruit is in the bottle.
- Subject
- Fruit
- Language
- German
- Also written
- service tree, Sorbus domestica
In more detail
The registered Hessischer Apfelwein specification is precise about what the juice is for, and it is not what most English accounts say: Der Saft aus der Speyerling-Frucht wird einzeln zugesetzt und nimmt dem Apfelwein die Trübung — it is added on its own and takes the haze out. Clarification, not flavour. That the phenolic material also gives grip is plausible and is a later gloss; the specification does not claim it.
The same specification is equally clear about how common the practice is: weit über 95 % des in Hessen hergestellten Apfelweins ist rein aus Äpfeln. Fewer than one bottle in twenty of Hessian apple wine contains any service tree fruit at all — and that is the figure given in the document with the strongest reason to talk the practice up.
Since the German food-code recast of 23 January 2026 the label and the ingredient are formally separate. The flavour indication Speierling means a tannic, acid-led apple wine; only the phrase mit Speierling-Früchten indicates that the fruit was used. A rule of that shape usually exists because the word was travelling without the fruit.
The tree itself is rare and slow to bear, and no published tannin figure for its fruit could be found. Its relative the wild service tree, Sorbus torminalis or Elsbeere, is reported to be used the same way in parts of Austria and Germany.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Style
Apfelwein
The dry, sharp, still apple wine of Hesse, fermented out from culinary and local fruit and served in ridged glasses from a stoneware jug.
Region
Hessen
Germany’s principal apple wine region, where *Apfelwein* is dry, sharp, low in tannin and served by the jug in dedicated taverns, and where the fruit comes from meadow orchards rather than from planted cider orchards.
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.
Chemistry
Tannin
In cider usage, the phenolic material responsible for bitterness and astringency, principally condensed tannins — procyanidins — built from catechin and epicatechin units.
Cider
Ebbelwoi
The Hessian dialect name for Apfelwein, used in and around Frankfurt where the drink is a civic institution. *Stöffche*, "the little stuff", is an affectionate local synonym.
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.
Bundespatentgericht, ECLI:DE:BPatG:2024:020924B30Wpat54.22.0 · government · passage verified 2026-08-25 · covers 2005–2024
A court decision that turns out to be the best available window on what the Hessischer Apfelwein protected name actually requires, because it quotes the registered specification back at length while ruling on an application to change it. Retrieved as PDF and read on 2026-08-25. The application, lodged in 2015 and reformulated in 2021, would among other things cut the apple share from 97 to 95 per cent, admit quince and pear alongside service tree, permit apple juice concentrate as a raw material, and permit sugar and acid correction. The German office refused it in 2022; this decision allows the appeal in part and sends nine of the sixteen changes back for fresh examination. The proceeding is live, so the specification described on this site is the one in force and not necessarily the one that will be.
Deutsche Lebensmittelbuch-Kommission, BAnz AT 02.03.2026 B5, GMBl 9/2026 S. 184–189; published by the Bundesministerium für Landwirtschaft, Ernährung und Heimat · standards body · passage verified 2026-08-25
Where the German numbers actually are. The Leitsätze are qualified expert opinion rather than legislation — courts use them as evidence of customary trade practice — but they are the only German statement of what an Apfelwein must contain, and they are followed. Retrieved as PDF and read on 2026-08-25, five months after this recast took effect. Two changes in the recast matter to this site. It creates *Apfel Cider* and *Birnen Cider* as a named category for the first time, at 1.2 to 8.5 % vol with up to 50 per cent water, concentrate and added aroma permitted — a category defined so as to admit almost everything the Apfelwein entry excludes. And it splits the word Speierling from the fruit: the flavour indication carries on meaning a tannic, acid-led apple wine, and only the phrase *mit Speierling-Früchten* now says that any service-tree fruit was used.