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What "craft" and "traditional" mean
Does "craft cider" mean anything?
In short
Not as a legal term. Neither "craft" nor "traditional" is defined in law for cider in the United Kingdom, the United States or the European Union, and no authority verifies either claim before it goes on a label.
They do carry conventional meanings. Craft usually implies a small producer and an intention to make something distinctive; traditional usually implies full-juice cider from cider fruit, fermented slowly and without heavy processing. Both are implications rather than requirements.
The words that do carry weight are the specific ones: a stated juice percentage, a named variety, a protected designation, an unfiltered or bottle-conditioned claim, or a stated absence of concentrate. Those can be checked; the adjectives cannot.
Why the words are unregulated
Food labelling law in most jurisdictions prohibits statements that are false or misleading, but it defines relatively few descriptive terms outright. Where a term has been defined — organic, or a protected geographical name — that has taken a specific legal instrument. No such instrument exists for craft or traditional in cider.
That leaves the general prohibition on misleading the consumer as the only constraint. It is a real constraint, but it bites on factual claims rather than on adjectives: a producer who states a juice content they do not have is in difficulty, while one who calls an industrially produced cider traditional is making a claim too vague to test.
The situation is not unique to cider. Craft has drifted the same way in beer, where several attempts at a formal definition have been made by trade bodies with a commercial interest in where the line falls. Trade-body definitions of this kind are worth reading as positions rather than as neutral standards.
What each word conventionally implies
| Term | Usual implication | Legal status | What would actually verify it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Craft | Small producer, distinctive intent, limited volume | Undefined everywhere | Nothing on the label; producer scale can sometimes be checked independently |
| Traditional | Full juice, cider fruit, slow fermentation, minimal processing | Undefined, except where part of a protected name such as Traditional Welsh Cider | A protected designation, or a specific method claim |
| Farmhouse | Made on a farm from its own fruit, in a traditional manner | Undefined | Nothing; the term is used by producers of every size |
| Real cider | Full juice, unpasteurised, not carbonated, still fermenting or capable of it | A campaigning definition, not a legal one | The consumer organisation that maintains the definition applies it at its own events |
| Artisan, handcrafted, small batch | Small scale and manual method | Undefined | Nothing |
| Scrumpy | Rough, still, strong West Country farmhouse cider | Undefined; historically a regional word | Nothing; used commercially across a wide range of products |
The claims that do carry information
- A protected designation — Cidre du Pays d’Auge, Sidra de Asturias, Herefordshire Perry, Hessischer Apfelwein — has a written specification and an inspection regime behind it.
- A stated juice content is a factual claim about composition and is enforceable as one.
- A named single variety tells you what the fruit was, and single-varietal claims are checkable against the producer’s own records.
- Bottle conditioned, unfiltered and unpasteurised are method claims with definite meanings, even where they are not separately regulated.
- A vintage year states that the fruit came from one harvest.
- An ingredients list, where one is given, states what was added.
How to use the words anyway
None of this makes the terms useless. They tell you how a producer wants their product understood, and that is genuine information about intent even when it is not information about content. A cider marketed as traditional is usually made by someone who thinks tradition is what their customers value, and often by someone who is in fact making cider that way.
The failure mode is treating the adjective as evidence. A reader who wants to know whether a cider is full juice, made from cider fruit and fermented slowly should look for those three statements, not for a word that gestures at all three without committing to any of them.
Also answered on this page
Questions this page covers, so you can tell at a glance whether it is the one you want.
- Is craft cider a legal term?
- What does traditional cider mean?
- What is real cider?
- What does scrumpy actually mean?
- How can I tell if a cider is made from fresh fruit?
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.
- What does everything on a cider label mean — Every cider label carries a strength figure and a volume, and almost all carry an allergen statement where sulphites are present above the declarable threshold. Beyond that, what a label must say — and what it is permitted to say — differs sharply between jurisdictions.
- What does 50% apple juice on a cider label mean
- What is scrumpy — Scrumpy is an informal West Country word for strong, still, usually cloudy farmhouse cider. It has no legal definition, so it describes a style expectation rather than a guaranteed method.
- What is the difference between farmhouse cider and the stuff in cans
- What is craft cider
- What is farmhouse cider
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.
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.
ACA · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Publishes a widely used US cider style framework and runs the Certified Cider Professional programme. Cited as one framework among several rather than as a universal classification.
European Cider and Fruit Wine Association (AICV)
AICV · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Food labelling and packaging guidance
Food Standards Agency / Department for Business and Trade · regulator · retrieved 2026-08-24
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.