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The cider words that do not translate
Do cidre, sidra, Most and Apfelwein all mean cider?
In short
No, and the failures are of three different kinds. Some words have no legal content in one country and binding legal content in the next. Some name a different drink from the one the translation suggests. And at least one — Most — means the fermented drink on one side of a border and the unfermented juice on the other.
The safe habit is to ask three questions of any cider word before translating it: does it denote something fermented, is it defined by anyone, and what does the definition measure? A word can survive the first question and fail the second and third.
This page is a map of where the translations break. It does not try to line the vocabularies up, because they do not line up.
The three ways a translation fails
The first failure is *legal weight. Most in Austria is a term the ordinance directs a producer to use, with compositional floors behind it; Most in Germany is a food-code entry with different floors again; Viez* on the Saar and Mosel is defined by nobody at all. Rendering all three as "cider" implies a common standard that does not exist.
The second failure is *denotation. Austrian Zider is a defined product made by blending juice with fruit wine — not fermented juice as such. The German food code acquired Apfel Cider* in 2026, permitting half water and concentrate. British cider is something else again. Three drinks, one English word on the label.
The third failure is *direction. Most means the fermented drink in Austria and, in Swiss usage, attaches to the unfermented side of the trade, so that the Swiss need süss or saurer* to disambiguate. This is not a subtle difference of nuance. It is the opposite meaning, in adjacent German-speaking countries.
| Word | Where | What it denotes | Defined by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Most | Austria | Fermented pome-fruit drink. In the Mostviertel usually a pear drink. | The Obstweinverordnung directs that pome fruit wine is to be labelled Obstwein, Obstmost or Most. At least 1.2 % vol; 5 % vol if a federal state is named. |
| Most | Germany (south-west) | A fermented apple or pear drink weaker and more dilute than Apfelwein. | Food-code entry: at least 4 % vol, 12 g/l sugar-free extract, up to a third water. Not law, but followed. |
| Most | Switzerland | Attaches to the unfermented side — a Mosterei presses juice, Mostäpfel are pressing fruit. The drink needs a qualifier. | Usage. Süssmost is the juice, saurer Most the fermented drink. |
| Apfelwein | Germany | Fully fermented, dry, sharp apple wine. The Hessian drink. | Food code: at least 5 % vol, 18 g/l sugar-free extract, 1.0 g/l volatile acid at most, sugar only to 55 °Oechsle. The binding ordinance sets no figure at all. |
| Viez | Saar, Mosel, Luxembourg | Fermented apple wine, in a dialect area rather than a state: the Moselle valley, the Saargau, the southern Eifel and Hunsrück, and into parts of Luxembourg. | Nobody. It carries no legal definition and no protected name — the one word in this table that nothing at all defines. |
| Zider / Cider | Austria | Juice blended with fruit wine of the same fruit group. Not fermented juice as such. | The Obstweinverordnung: up to 5 % vol and 2.5 bar, with alcohol including residual sugar not above 8 % vol. |
| Apfel Cider | Germany | A permissive new category: 1.2 to 8.5 % vol, 1 to 2.5 bar. | Food code, from 23 January 2026. Honey, concentrate, natural aroma and water to half the volume are all allowed. |
| Sidra natural | Asturias | Still, unfiltered, fully fermented cider, poured from height. | The Asturian protected designation, for cider made under it. |
| Sagardoa | Basque Country | Basque natural cider. Literally apple wine — sagar, apple; ardo, wine. | The Euskal Sagardoa specification, for cider made under it: no sugar, no water, no filtration, endogenous carbon dioxide only. |
| Cidre | France | Fermented apple juice, with the appellations adding their own requirements. | French decree, and the five cider appellations. |
Words that describe a ritual, not a drink
A second group of terms names something people do, and these are the ones most often mistranslated into an explanation. Escanciar is the Asturian pour from height; txotx is the Basque call at the barrel; espicha is the gathering; culete is the measure poured. English writing routinely supplies a mechanism for each — usually aeration — that the terms themselves do not carry and that no published study supports.
Espalme is the sharpest example. It does not name the foam raised by the pour. It names the foam’s rapid and complete disappearance, which is a different thing and the opposite of what a reader would guess. A glossary that renders it as "head" has not translated it; it has replaced it.
The Basque txotx is likewise a concrete object before it is an event: Euskaltzaindia gives the barrel peg. The ritual took its name from the thing, not the other way round.
How to read a word you do not know
- Ask whether it denotes something fermented. Süssmost, Apfelsaft and Swiss Most do not.
- Ask who defines it. Austrian terms usually have an ordinance behind them; German terms usually have a food-code guideline; Viez and the dialect words have nothing.
- Ask what the definition measures. Composition, as in Austria; technique, as in the Basque and Welsh specifications; or carbonation, as in the German umbrella categories. A word that names a sugar band and a word that names a pressure band cannot be equivalent.
- Ask whether the word is doing regional work. Ebbelwoi, Äppler and Stöffche are Hessian names for Apfelwein and carry no separate meaning; Schwäbischer Most is a different product with different numbers.
- Where a term names a practice rather than a drink, resist the urge to translate the reason along with the word. The reason is usually an addition made in English.
What this page deliberately does not do
It does not offer a table of equivalents. The instinct to line up dry / brut / trocken / seco or cider / cidre / sidra / Most produces a document that is easy to use and wrong, because the schemes behind those words are cut on different axes and carry different degrees of force.
It also does not rank them. A tradition with a statutory definition is not more serious than one without; Austria has statute and no protected name, the Basque Country has a specification and an unregistered file, and the Saar has neither and an unbroken drinking culture. Legal machinery follows commercial need, not depth of tradition.
Also answered on this page
Questions this page covers, so you can tell at a glance whether it is the one you want.
- Do cidre, sidra, Most and Apfelwein all mean cider?
- Does Most mean juice or cider?
- Is Apfelwein the same as cider?
- What is Viez?
- Why do cider words not translate?
Related
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- Why does dry cider in one country taste sweeter than dry cider in another
- How is austrian birnmost regulated differently from welsh perry — Austria regulates the drink and Wales regulates the making of it. The Obstweinverordnung fixes minimum alcohol and acid, a maximum for volatile acid, a statutory sweetness ladder and, for a state-labelled Most, no haze — and leaves technique largely open. The Traditional Welsh Perry specification states one number, 3.00 to 8.49 % ABV, allows three additives, forbids ten operations including filtration, fining, pasteurisation, sweetening and added gas, and says the perry may be clear or cloudy. Each tradition’s ordinary product would fail the other’s rule.
- What is txotx — *Txotx* is the Basque cider-house custom of drinking straight from the barrel: at the call, drinkers queue to catch a stream of cider from an opened cask in the glass. It runs through the cider-house season from about January to April.
- Where is cider made in germany
- What is most the drink — In Austria, southern Germany and Switzerland *Most* is fermented apple or pear juice — the local cider. Confusingly, *Süßmost* is the unfermented juice, so the word alone does not tell you whether there is alcohol in the glass.
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.
Obstweinverordnung, BGBl. II Nr. 18/2014, consolidated
Republic of Austria, made under §§ 35, 36 and 37(1) of the Weingesetz 2009; consolidated text published by the Bundeskellereiinspektion · legislation · passage verified 2026-08-25
The instrument that decides what Most legally is in Austria, and the answer is: a fermented drink. That single fact is the one most often got wrong in English writing, because Most means the unfermented juice in Switzerland and is ambiguous in Germany. The ordinance also names two pear cultivars individually — Speckbirne and Schweizer Wasserbirne — in a derogation lowering their minimum acidity, which is a legislature encoding pomology. Retrieved from the federal cellar inspectorate’s mirror because the Austrian legal information system refused every automated request.
Weingesetz 2009 — Bundesgesetz über den Verkehr mit Wein und Obstwein
Republic of Austria, BGBl. I Nr. 111/2009 as amended; consolidated text mirrored by the Bundeskellereiinspektion · legislation · passage verified 2026-08-25
The enabling act above the Obstweinverordnung, and the reason Austrian fruit wine sits in wine law at all: the long title is an act on the trade in wine *and fruit wine*. It also carries the statutory definition of the Klosterneuburg must scale. Read as PDF on 2026-08-25 from the federal cellar inspectorate’s mirror of the consolidated text, because the Austrian legal information system answers automated requests with a security challenge; the mirror is headed “Bundesrecht konsolidiert” and footed www.ris.bka.gv.at.
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.
Verordnung über alkoholhaltige Getränke (Alkoholhaltige Getränke-Verordnung, AGeV)
Federal Republic of Germany, of 29 January 1998, in the version of 30 June 2003 (BGBl. I S. 1255), last amended 11 October 2021 (BGBl. I S. 4683) · legislation · passage verified 2026-08-25
The binding German instrument for apple wine, and the striking thing about it is how little it says. It defines three umbrella categories by carbonation and by starting material, forbids the use of grape products, and governs how the word *Wein* may be compounded. It sets no minimum alcohol, no acidity, no extract and no permitted-additions list for Apfelwein. Every number a German apple wine is expected to meet sits in the Leitsätze instead, which are not law. German wine law does not reach apple wine at all: the Weingesetz applies to wine and other products of viticulture. Read as PDF on 2026-08-25.
Euskal Sagardoa Fundazioa, Astigarraga, with the Iparraldeko sagarnoen sindikata · designation authority · passage verified 2026-08-25
The current specification behind the Euskal Sagardoa file, retrieved as PDF and read on 2026-08-25. It is a cross-border document: the protected area now runs from the three Basque provinces of Spain across the frontier into Soule, Basse-Navarre and Labourd, with the French communes listed one by one against the 2023 official geographic code, and the name itself acquires French forms. Read alongside the EU register, which still records the file as applied rather than registered. It also adds a fourth apple class, *dulces*, to the acid, bitter and bittersharp classes the earlier versions used — four cultivars only: Aran Gorri, Mamula, Muga Gorri and Ondo Motxa.
Euskaltzaindiaren Hiztegia — the dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Basque Language
Euskaltzaindia · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-25
The language academy for Basque, and the authority CiderHQ uses for what a Basque cider word actually means rather than what English cider writing has made of it. Two of its entries corrected this site: txotx is a peg, not a toast, and the -a on sagardoa and txotxa is the definite article rather than part of the word.
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.
Where to go next
- Learn about cider — The rest of the introductory material, grouped by the question it answers.
- Glossary — Any word on this page you did not recognise, defined in one or two sentences.
- Comparisons — What separates cider from the drinks it is most often confused with.