Perry pear
De Fer
A hard, tannic Domfrontais poiré pear whose name — iron — describes the fruit exactly.
Also written Poire de Fer, Fer.
- 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
- 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 hard, tannic, low-acid pear onto the English scheme.
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 | Medium |
French descriptive material on a hard, markedly tannic poiré pear.
Extremely hard fruit giving a low-acid, markedly astringent juice with very little aroma.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for De Fer, 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 De Fer. 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
Late October into November. The hard flesh resists breakdown and gives a slightly longer working window than the soft aromatic pears.
Better than most poiré pears, on account of the hardness the name records.
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 | low | A tough skin gives some resistance. |
Juice and pressing
- High tannin, low acid
- Low juice yield from hard flesh
- Requires thorough milling
How it is used
- Blended in small proportion for tannin and length.
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Not made alone anywhere CiderHQ can evidence; the juice is too astringent and too low in acid to stand by itself.
About De Fer
De Fer means "of iron", and the name is a description rather than a flourish: the flesh is hard enough that milling it is genuinely harder work, and juice yields are lower than from the soft aromatic pears grown alongside it. England produced the same name twice over in Rock and Knapper, from communities that had never heard of the Domfrontais.
The juice is low in acid and markedly tannic, and its use is structural. In a Domfrontais blend it works underneath aroma and sweetness, giving length to a drink that is otherwise soft. The tannin, as always in pears, presents as astringency rather than as bitterness, and a poiré carrying too much of it dries the mouth rather than tasting bitter.
The hardness has a compensating advantage. Where most poiré and perry pears are unusable within days of falling, De Fer holds, which gives a producer some room to work at the end of a season when several cultivars are coming down at once.
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. Fer is iron, and the name describes flesh hard enough to invite the comparison — the same instinct that produced Rock and Knapper in England.
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.
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 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.
Knapper
A hard, tannic border perry pear whose name probably records either stone-knapping or the hardness of the fruit.
Coppy
A tannic perry pear of the Welsh border country, known from few trees and giving a juice with unusual grip for its class.
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.
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 are apples milled for cider
- What is pressing yield — Pressing yield is the proportion of fruit weight recovered as juice. It varies from under half on a poorly loaded basket press to around seventy per cent on a well-run rack-and-cloth or belt press.
- 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.
- Is there a perry pear that can be stored — Rock is the clearest exception. Its flesh is hard enough that the fruit holds for several weeks in cool conditions instead of the days most perry pears allow, which lets a mill schedule it rather than react to it.
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.