Perry pear
Brandy
A high-sugar Herefordshire perry pear whose name records the strength of the perry it makes rather than any flavour of brandy.
Also written Brandy Pear.
- Classification
- Sweet — Perry pear classification
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Sugar and body, Late season
- Origin
- Herefordshire
- Species
- Pyrus communis
- Flowering
- Mid flowering band
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
How it is classified
Perry pear classification
Sweet
Low acid, low tannin. Mild perry pears giving soft, light perry.
Low acid and low tannin with high sugar. Accounts that emphasise its strength sometimes describe it as bittersweet; the tannin reported is not high enough to support that under the scheme’s own thresholds.
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 | Light | |
| Sugar | Very high | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Full |
The sweet-class placement in the Long Ashton account, with the sugar band raised on the consistent description of unusually dense juice.
Dense, low-acid juice of high sugar content, giving weight and alcohol rather than sharpness or grip.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Brandy, 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
Each figure is shown with where and when it was taken. They are not averaged: the same cultivar grown in another climate genuinely gives different numbers, and collapsing them into one would be the most misleading thing this page could do.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Specific gravity3 readings, spanning 1.053–1.069 SG | 1.069 SG | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England | 1903–1963Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology |
| 1.053 SG | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) | |
| 1.057 SG | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022–2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) | |
| Titratable acidity2 readings, spanning 2.9–4.4 g/L | 4.4 g/L | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England | 1903–1963Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology |
| 2.9 g/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) | |
| Total tannin2 readings, spanning 120.0–730.0 mg/L | 120.0 mg/L | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England | 1903–1963Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology |
| 730.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) | |
| Free amino nitrogen | 4.9 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| pH | 3.47 pH | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022–2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Phenolic acids | 330.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Proline | 23.8 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Sorbitol | 10.0–30.0 g/L | Various growing sites; the literature pools pear juice analyses rather than reporting by orchard | — | Various journals and institute reports |
| Total amino acids | 41.2 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Total phenolics | 1050.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
3 properties here have been measured more than once. The readings are shown as they were taken and are deliberately not averaged — climate, season, ripeness at picking, the age of the tree and the analytical method all move these numbers, and a single figure would hide every one of them. Where a spread is given below a property, it is the distance between separate studies, not the variation within any one of them.
How these were measured
- Juice density. Published by the source in the four-figure form (1058) and written here in full.
- Titration, reported as malic acid. Published as a percentage and stored here in grams per litre by exact conversion — one per cent weight per volume is ten grams per litre — so that the historic figures sit in one column with the modern survey the site also holds.
- Löwenthal permanganate titration. Published as a percentage and stored here in milligrams per litre by exact conversion — one per cent weight per volume is ten thousand milligrams per litre — so that the historic figures sit in one column with the modern survey the site also holds.
- Juice pressed from fruit collected in the Three Counties and frozen before analysis. Published to five decimal places and shown at the three the site displays.
- Titration, reported as malic acid.
- “True tannin” — the polymerised phenolic fraction, measured separately from the phenolic acids. Published in grams per litre and stored here in milligrams per litre by exact conversion.
- Phenolic acids measured separately from the tannin fraction. Published in grams per litre and stored here in milligrams per litre by exact conversion.
- The sum of the true tannin and phenolic acid fractions as the surveyor reports it. Published in grams per litre and stored here in milligrams per litre by exact conversion.
- HPLC. The whole amino acid pool by mass, assimilable and non-assimilable together.
- Free amino nitrogen, calculated from the individual amino acids as nitrogen available to yeast. Excludes proline.
- HPLC.
- Juice gravity of the separate batch taken for the single-variety fermentation trial, before any sugar adjustment.
- Meter on the fermentation-trial juice before adjustment.
- A general pear juice figure, not an analysis of Brandy. It matters on this record because a cultivar already high in fermentable sugar produces a perry of unusual strength that nonetheless retains the sorbitol sweetness, which is how a dry-fermented Brandy perry can read as both strong and sweet. The range is not tied to a single study or season.
- Long Ashton perry pear analyses, reaching CiderHQ through a National Association of Cider Makers report compiled in 2010 from the station’s material. The underlying volume is Luckwill and Pollard, Perry Pears (University of Bristol, 1963), which CiderHQ has verified bibliographically and not opened. The compiler warns that juice quality in perry pears improves markedly with tree age, and that young trees give weaker acid and tannin and a lower gravity. A single figure for a perry pear is therefore a figure for a tree of some unstated age.
- Long Ashton perry pear analyses, reaching CiderHQ through a National Association of Cider Makers report compiled in 2010 from the station’s material. The underlying volume is Luckwill and Pollard, Perry Pears (University of Bristol, 1963), which CiderHQ has verified bibliographically and not opened. A permanganate figure, not comparable with a Folin–Ciocalteu total-phenolics figure.
- One sample from one source in one season. The surveyor reports the same variety differing markedly between years, sites and tree types, and publishes the samples separately rather than pooling them.
- Measured as “true tannin” — the polymerised phenolic fraction — separately from the phenolic acids. It is not a Folin–Ciocalteu total and not a permanganate total, and should be compared only with figures produced the same way.
- Perry pear juice runs far lower in assimilable nitrogen than cider apple juice, a difference the Long Ashton workers reported and this survey confirms across most of the varieties sampled. Several readings here sit below the level at which a ferment is generally expected to need feeding.
- Proline is an amino acid a wine or cider yeast cannot assimilate without oxygen, so it does not count towards usable nitrogen. In these pear juices it routinely exceeds the whole assimilable amino pool, which is why a perry must can be rich in amino acids and starved of nitrogen at the same time.
- The four fermentation trials were chaptalised by differing amounts to hit a common alcohol target, so the finished strengths are not a property of the fruit and CiderHQ does not record them as measurements. The juice gravity and juice pH below are measurements of the juice as pressed, before any adjustment.
Compare within a study to see where these figures sat among the other cultivars the same work analysed — which is a more robust statement than the figures themselves, because absolute values move between laboratories and the ordering inside one study mostly survives.
Watched in the orchard
What named research programmes recorded about this fruit at their own sites. Bloom, harvest and cropping belong to a place and a run of seasons rather than to a cultivar, so they are reported site by site rather than merged.
Long Ashton perry pear varieties
Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England · 1903–1963 · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
Maritime and mild. The station sat outside the perry counties it studied — the pears are Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire fruit — which is worth holding in mind when a figure here is compared with one measured on fruit picked in the Three Counties.
- Harvest
- First to fourth week of October
- Growth habit
- Small–medium
- Bearing
- Heavy, biennial
- Held as
- Listed as “Brandy”
Medium acid, low tannin, bland, aromatic, dark. Average.
Recorded by the programme from professional cidermakers in the region. One panel, one place, one set of seasons — a description of these ciders rather than of the cultivar everywhere.
Marked by the compiler as a variety whose juice quality improves greatly with tree age: a young tree gives weaker acid, weaker tannin and a much lower gravity than the figures here.
Juice analysis: specific gravity, acidity by titration as malic acid, tannin by Löwenthal permanganate titration. Acid and tannin are published as percentages and stored here in grams per litre by exact conversion. Vigour, cropping habit, maturity window and a vintage quality assessment are the compiler’s summary of the station’s descriptions.
Three Counties perry pear juice survey
Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties — the perry country itself, rather than a research station elsewhere · 2022–2024 · Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell)
The lower Severn and Wye vales: mild, wet, and the only ground in Britain where perry pears have ever been grown at scale. Fruit was collected across three autumns, and the survey reports each collection separately rather than pooling the seasons.
- Held as
- Sample By-Oct24
Final gravity 1.00243 and 7.29% ABV. The most aromatic and complex of the four in the tasting that followed, and the only one in which a terpene — terpinen-4-ol — was tentatively identified.
Recorded by the programme from professional cidermakers in the region. One panel, one place, one set of seasons — a description of these ciders rather than of the cultivar everywhere.
Juice from single varieties, frozen before analysis. Specific gravity; titratable acidity by titration as malic acid; “true tannin” and phenolic acids measured as separate fractions; individual amino acids by HPLC, with free amino nitrogen calculated from them and proline reported apart because yeast cannot assimilate it anaerobically. Where samples differed by location, tree age or year, they are reported separately.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Late
- Flowering
- Mid flowering band
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Moderate
October. Later than most of the Three Counties crop, and worth waiting for: the sugar continues to build, which is the whole point of the cultivar. The National Perry Pear Collection records it ripening in the first half of October at Hartpury, one band earlier than the late window recorded here.
Better than most perry pears, though that is a low bar. The fruit holds for a little over a week in cool conditions before the flesh breaks down.
Mid to late flowering, which gives it some protection from spring frost. The National Perry Pear Collection places it in the mid flowering band, from flowering records kept over many seasons. The collection lists it in two adjacent bands, mid and late, which is what a variety whose blossom straddles a boundary looks like in a table with four columns.
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.
Ripening moves with the site and the season. Where the National Perry Pear Collection’s observation at Hartpury falls in a different band from the window recorded here, both are kept rather than one overwriting the other.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Pear scab | moderate | — |
| Self-incompatibility | high | — |
Juice and pressing
- High sugar, low acid
- Slow to ferment out because of the sugar load
- Retains noticeable sweetness when fermented dry, from sorbitol
How it is used
- Blended with sharper pears to raise the alcohol and body of a perry that would otherwise be thin.
- Grown in Herefordshire as a strength pear rather than a flavour pear.
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
A single-variety Brandy perry is heavy and low in acid, and readily tastes flat without something sharper alongside it. Where it is made alone, the interest is the weight rather than the balance.
About Brandy
Brandy is a Herefordshire perry pear named for what its juice does rather than for what the fruit is like. It sits in a small group of perry pear names — Brandy, Gin, Sack — that describe the drink in terms of stronger drinks, and the naming should be read as ethnography rather than as description: it records how a farming community categorised its own produce, not any resemblance to a spirit. The fruit itself is unremarkable to look at.
What distinguishes it is sugar. The juice is dense and low in acid, and it carries enough fermentable sugar to push a perry well above the strength that a Blakeney Red or a Thorn would reach. Because pears also carry sorbitol, which yeast cannot use, a Brandy perry fermented to the end of its fermentable sugar keeps a real sweetness alongside that strength. This is the combination that gave the pear its name, and it is why it was planted in orchards that otherwise grew sharper fruit.
It is a blending pear more than a solo one. On its own the low acid leaves the perry heavy and slack, and the useful thing to do with it is to put weight underneath a sharper cultivar. It ripens in October, later than most, and keeps a little better than the average perry pear, which is a modest but real advantage for a mill working through a season’s fruit.
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
No documented raising. The name belongs to a group of perry pear names — Brandy, Gin, Sack — that describe the drink’s effect or strength rather than the fruit.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Gin | Disputed identity | Brandy and Gin are separate cultivars that are frequently paired in nursery lists and occasionally conflated in orchard records. The names belong to the same naming habit, not to the same tree. |
The National Perry Pear Collection’s identifications are supported by DNA analysis of the trees it holds, which is why they are treated here as the stronger account where they conflict with a documentary one. Where the collection records a name for two varieties it holds as distinct, the name identifies a group of trees rather than one variety, and fruit offered under it needs checking against something other than its label.
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.
Late Treacle
The later-ripening of the two Treacle pears, giving the same dense sweet juice several weeks after the first has gone.
Sack
A perry pear named after the fortified wine of the same name, and one of the group of Three Counties cultivars named for strength.
Plant de Blanc
The dominant poiré pear of the Domfrontais and the cultivar the Poiré Domfront appellation is built around.
Green Longdon
The senior member of the Longdon group, widely grown in north-west Gloucestershire and carrying six synonyms, three of which other Longdons also claim.
Oldfield
A Worcestershire perry pear with a nineteenth-century show reputation, giving a light, low-acid perry that has been made single-variety for well over a century.
Taynton Squash
A Gloucestershire pear named in seventeenth-century writing as one of the finest for perry, reduced to very few trees by the twentieth century and propagated back from them.
Styles it is characteristic of
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 i know when my cider has finished fermenting — Take two hydrometer readings several days apart: if the gravity has not moved, the ferment is over. Airlock activity is not a reliable test, because a slow ferment can produce gas too slowly to see.
- How long does cider take to ferment — A warm ferment with cultured yeast can finish in one to two weeks; a cool wild ferment in a cellar may take three months or more. Slow is not the same as stuck — the test is whether gravity is still falling.
- What is perry — Perry is an alcoholic drink made by fermenting the juice of pears, traditionally of specific perry pear cultivars rather than eating pears. It is to pears what cider is to apples, and has its own history in the three counties of England and in Normandy.
- When are cider apples harvested — In the northern hemisphere the cider harvest runs from about September to November, with late bittersweets such as Dabinett and Vilberie coming in last. Cider fruit is generally picked riper than dessert fruit, and often gathered from the ground.
- What is juice blending
- 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.
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.
Perry Pears
L. C. Luckwill and A. Pollard (eds), published for the National Fruit and Cider Institute by the University of Bristol, 1963 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25 · covers 1963
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library, which records the work as Luckwill, 1963, published for the National Fruit and Cider Institute by the University of Bristol. The catalogue entry names Luckwill alone where the standard citation names Luckwill and Pollard as joint editors; CiderHQ keeps both names and records the discrepancy rather than silently following one catalogue. This is the foundational descriptive work on English perry pears and the ancestor of most later variety lists. No copy was opened: it is sixty years old, out of print, and held in research libraries rather than in open digital collections.
National Perry Pear Centre, Hartpury · specialist organisation · passage verified 2026-08-24
Read on 2026-08-24 — and the address CiderHQ had registered, perrypears.co.uk, is no longer the Centre at all. It fails the TLS handshake over https, and over plain http it resolves to a Sedo domain-parking page: an earlier pass in this sprint recorded it as retrieved on the strength of an HTTP 200, which was wrong, and the correction is the point. The Centre publishes at nationalperrypearcentre.org.uk. It is the closest thing British perry has to an identity authority: it holds at least two examples of most known varieties, states that the DNA of most of them has been determined and is used as an aid to identification, and publishes a variety register with synonym lists. Its 121-variety register is transcribed into the perry pear records, including the nineteen names it shows being claimed by more than one variety.
Three Counties Cider and Perry Association
TCCPA · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Research on pear juice composition and sorbitol in perry
Various journals and institute reports · peer-reviewed literature · registered as competent for this subject
The evidence base for the single most important chemical difference between cider and perry: pears carry substantial sorbitol, which yeast does not ferment, so a fully fermented perry retains sweetness a fully fermented cider cannot.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.