Perry pear
Antricotin
A tannic Domfrontais poiré pear used to give structure to blends led by the region’s softer aromatic fruit.
Also written Antricotin de Domfront.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — Perry pear classification
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Tannin and structure, Late season, Bittersweet base
- Origin
- The Domfrontais, southern Normandy
- Species
- Pyrus communis
- Vigour
- Very vigorous — a large tree that takes years to settle to cropping
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
How it is classified
Perry pear classification
Bittersweet
Low acid with substantial tannin — the class that gives perry grip.
Mapped from French descriptions of a low-acid, tannic pear. French practice would describe it in its own terms; the English category is CiderHQ’s reading of that description.
Every classification on CiderHQ names its system. Why there is more than one.
What it contributes to a blend
A direction, not a measurement. These bands are the level of resolution the evidence supports, and they say which way adding this fruit pushes a blend rather than what the finished cider will be.
| Axis | Typical | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Acid | Low | |
| Tannin | Firm | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Moderate | |
| Astringency | Drying | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Full |
French descriptive material on a tannic, low-acid poiré pear.
A drying, low-acid juice that gives a poiré grip and length rather than aroma.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Antricotin, and for a great deal of cider fruit that is a finding rather than a gap. Bittersweet apples in particular contribute tannin, sugar and body while being close to aromatically mute, and most of what a cider made from them smells of was produced by the fermentation rather than carried in by the fruit. CiderHQ publishes the absence rather than filling the space with descriptors nothing supports.
Measured analysis
CiderHQ holds no sourced juice analysis for Antricotin. Figures for this cultivar circulate, but they reach the present through compilation rather than through the original tables, and publishing a number we cannot attribute would give it an authority it has not earned. What is known about how the fruit behaves is described above and below.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Late
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Very vigorous — a large tree that takes years to settle to cropping
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
October into November, later than the aromatic cultivars.
Firmer than the soft aromatic pears, with a correspondingly longer working window.
Mid to late. Self-incompatible.
Pears are not self-fertile. A variety needs another in blossom at the same time to set fruit, which is why the flowering band matters more in a perry orchard than the harvest window does.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Pear scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Substantial tannin
- Low acid
- Slow ferment
How it is used
- Blended in modest proportion for tannin and length in Domfrontais poiré.
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Not made alone. Its tannin is a blend component and the low acid would leave a single-variety poiré without balance.
About Antricotin
Antricotin is one of the tannic pears of the Domfrontais, and its role in a blend is the same as Butt’s or Barland’s in the Three Counties: it supplies grip and length to fruit that has neither. The proportion is small, because the region’s poiré is defined by aroma and sweetness rather than by structure, but without something of this kind the drink has nothing to hold it together.
Perry pear tannin behaves the same way in Normandy as it does in Herefordshire. It reads as astringency — a drying grip across the mouth — rather than as the back-of-tongue bitterness that the same measured tannin would give in a cider apple. A poiré with noticeable tannin is a poiré that dries the mouth, not one that tastes bitter, and describing it in apple terms misleads.
It ripens later than the aromatic cultivars, into November in some seasons, and the fruit is firmer and holds a little better. Nothing about the name is explained in any source CiderHQ has verified, which puts it in the same position as the great majority of perry pear names on either side of the Channel.
Names, origin and identity
Cultivar naming is the hardest problem in cider fruit data. The same tree carries different names across ten miles, and two different trees have shared a name for two centuries.
Origin · traditional account
Local tradition. The name is not explained in any source CiderHQ has verified.
Related cultivars
Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.
Fruit that plays a similar part
Cultivars sharing a classification under the same system and a comparable role in a blend. Not a similarity score — a stated relationship.
Red Pear
A tannic Herefordshire perry pear whose generic name has been applied to red-fruited pears generally, making orchard records that use it almost impossible to interpret.
Coppy
A tannic perry pear of the Welsh border country, known from few trees and giving a juice with unusual grip for its class.
De Fer
A hard, tannic Domfrontais poiré pear whose name — iron — describes the fruit exactly.
Gin
A small Herefordshire perry pear named, like Brandy and Sack, for the strength of the drink it makes rather than for anything about the fruit.
Red Longdon
One of four perry pears carrying the name of the Worcestershire parish of Longdon, distinguished by its red-flushed fruit and a juice with more tannin than acid.
Carisi
A tannic Domfrontais poiré pear, one of the cultivars that gives the region’s blends structure.
Styles it is characteristic of
Poiré
French perry, made chiefly in southern Normandy and Maine from local perry pears, characteristically sweet, low in alcohol and firmly sparkling.
Poiré Domfront
The controlled appellation perry of the Domfrontais in southern Normandy, made predominantly from the Plant de Blanc pear on high-standard trees and finished sweet, low in alcohol and bottle-conditioned.
Where it grows
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.
- How do you stop cider from fermenting — By removing the yeast, by chilling, by filtering it out, by pasteurising, or by a combination — and in practice a home maker cannot reliably stop a ferment mid-way with chemicals alone. Sorbate prevents yeast multiplying but will not stop an active ferment.
- What pears is poire domfront made from — Chiefly Plant de Blanc, which the appellation requires to make up at least forty per cent of the orchard. Poiré Domfront is the only full appellation of origin for perry anywhere.
- What is juice blending
- What is maceration in cider making — Maceration is letting milled pomace stand before pressing, so that enzymes soften the tissue and phenolics and aroma move from the skins into the juice. It raises both colour and tannin, and raises the risk of oxidation with them.
- How are perry pears classified — Perry pears are conventionally divided by acid and tannin into sweet, medium sharp, bittersharp and bittersweet, following the scheme used in the English perry literature. Sorbitol content matters too, and it does not appear in the classes.
- What is normandy cider
Where to go next
- How cider apples are classified — Why there are four schemes and none of them is universal.
- The blend explorer — See which way changing the proportions moves a blend.
- Blending — What a cider maker is actually deciding when they build a blend.
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.
Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)
IFPC · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The French technical institute for cider production. The authority for the French cultivar classification families, for keeving as an industrial process, and for the pectin and nitrogen chemistry that keeving depends on.
Institut national de l’origine et de la qualité (INAO)
INAO · regulator · passage verified 2026-08-24
The Cidre Pays d’Auge cahier des charges was read in full on 2026-08-24, in the version homologated by arrêté of 17 January 2026 and published in the Journal officiel on 21 January. That qualification is not decoration. A revision adopted by the Comité national on 10 September 2025 is currently under the procédure nationale d’opposition, is clearly marked as not prejudging the final text, and specifies carbonation differently from the text in force — as grams of CO2 per litre rather than as a minimum pressure in bar. A summary citing the draft would have put a figure on the page that no producer is held to. CiderHQ records the operative text and says which one it is.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.