Glossary · Fruit
Vintage quality
Definition
A traditional West Country designation for a cider apple capable of making a balanced, complete cider on its own, without blending. It is a judgement about the fruit, not a statement about a harvest year.
- Subject
- Fruit
In more detail
The list of vintage cultivars is short and conventional — Kingston Black is the usual first example — and it rests on generations of trade experience rather than on an analytical threshold. What the phrase records is that the fruit brings acid, tannin, sugar and aroma in workable proportions at once.
It should not be confused with a vintage statement on a label, which simply means the fruit came from a single stated year.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Cider
Vintage
A cider or perry made wholly from the fruit of one stated harvest year, as distinct from a blend across seasons.
Cider
Single varietal
A cider or perry made from one named cultivar, usually with a stated minimum proportion — commonly 90 or 100 per cent — rather than from a blend.
Fruit
Bittersharp
In the Long Ashton classification, a cider apple high in both acid and tannin — conventionally above about 0.45 per cent acid and 0.2 per cent tannin. The smallest of the four classes and the most self-sufficient.
Cider
Blend
A cider or perry made by combining juices or finished batches, either by mixing fruit before milling or by assembling separately fermented lots to a target balance.
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.
A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset
Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001. ISBN 9781874336877 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001, ISBN 9781874336877. The author was Long Ashton’s cider pomologist, which is why this work is registered for Somerset cultivar identity at all — it is the nearest thing to a successor to the station’s own descriptions. No copy was opened. Not digitised in any open collection.
Long Ashton Research Station cider fruit analyses
National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol · research institute · registered as competent for this subject · covers 1903–2003
The foundational body of cider-fruit science in English. Long Ashton produced the acid-and-tannin classification that divides cider apples into sweet, sharp, bittersweet and bittersharp, and analysed hundreds of cultivars grown at its Somerset site. Its figures are historic measurements of specific fruit at a specific place, not universal constants — a distinction CiderHQ preserves in every measurement record that cites it.