Perry pear
Coppy
A tannic perry pear of the Welsh border country, known from few trees and giving a juice with unusual grip for its class.
Also written Coppy Pear, Copy.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — Perry pear classification
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Tannin and structure, Bittersweet base
- Origin
- The Herefordshire and Monmouthshire border
- Species
- Pyrus communis
- Flowering
- Mid flowering band
- Vigour
- Very vigorous — a large tree that takes years to settle to cropping
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
How it is classified
Perry pear classification
Bittersweet
Low acid with substantial tannin — the class that gives perry grip.
Low acid with substantial tannin. Placed from descriptive material; the cultivar has not been analysed in any source CiderHQ has verified.
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 |
Descriptive accounts of a markedly astringent, low-acid juice, without a published analysis. These bands were authored from description; published analyses of this fruit have since been transcribed onto the record from named trial programmes and are shown above. The bands are not derived from those figures, which is why this profile is marked as classified rather than measured.
A firm, drying juice with little acidity to balance it, contributing structure to a blend rather than balance.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Coppy, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free amino nitrogen | 9.1 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Phenolic acids | 600.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Proline | 58.4 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Specific gravity | 1.055 SG | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Titratable acidity | 9.6 g/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Total amino acids | 65.4 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Total phenolics | 1580.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Total tannin | 980.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
How these were measured
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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 Co-Oct24
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
- Very vigorous — a large tree that takes years to settle to cropping
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
October. Firm fruit that does not collapse as quickly as the soft-fleshed pears. 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.
Mid to late. Self-incompatible. The National Perry Pear Collection places it in the mid flowering band, from flowering records kept over many seasons.
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 | — |
Juice and pressing
- Substantial tannin
- Low acid
- Astringent rather than bitter
How it is used
- Blended in small proportion for grip.
- Recorded in border orchard surveys as one of the tannic pears worth keeping when an orchard was replanted.
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Rarely made alone; the low acid leaves nothing for the astringency to work against.
About Coppy
Coppy is a border perry pear named, as far as anyone can tell, after a coppice. That is a common pattern: perry pears were found rather than bred, and a found tree takes the name of where it stood — a field, a wood, a farm, a family. The name tells you that somebody in Herefordshire or Monmouthshire noticed a pear tree in a small wood and thought it worth grafting, and nothing else.
The juice is low in acid and substantially tannic, which places it among the bittersweets and makes it a blending pear. Perry pear tannin generally reads as astringency rather than bitterness, and Coppy is a good example: the effect is a drying grip across the mouth rather than anything bitter at the back of the tongue. Used at a modest proportion it gives a soft border blend some spine.
It survives in small numbers. Cultivars like this are the reason the identification work of the Marcher Apple Network and the collection at Hartpury matter: without a body actively looking for and propagating them, a perry pear with no commercial value and a handful of veteran trees simply stops existing when the last orchard is grubbed.
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
Unrecorded. Coppy is a dialect word for a coppice or a small wood, and the name most likely records where a tree stood rather than who found it.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Coppice | Regional name | Recorded as a synonym of Coppy by the National Perry Pear Collection. |
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.
Why it matters
- Survives in small numbers on the border, and is one of the cultivars carried forward by the Marcher Apple Network’s identification work rather than by commercial demand.
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.
Antricotin
A tannic Domfrontais poiré pear used to give structure to blends led by the region’s softer aromatic 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.
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.
Carisi
A tannic Domfrontais poiré pear, one of the cultivars that gives the region’s blends structure.
Harley Gum
A Herefordshire perry pear whose name records a gum exuded by the tree, and one of the more distinctive names in a fruit full of them.
Nailer
A tannic perry pear of the Forest of Dean and north Worcestershire country, whose name is generally taken to record the nail-making trade.
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.
- 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.
- 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 welsh cider
- What is herefordshire 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.
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.
Marcher Apple Network · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Has rediscovered and DNA-fingerprinted a number of lost Welsh border cultivars. Cited for identity work on cultivars the national collections do not hold.
WPCS · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Documents Welsh cider and perry traditions and has done substantial work identifying and conserving Welsh perry pear cultivars that were close to being lost.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.