Perry pear
Grüne Pichelbirne
The sharpest Austrian perry pear measured at Klosterneuburg, and one of the most phenolic — an Upper Austrian variety first recorded in 1822 whose must the trial found sharpest of eleven.
Also written Grüne Billingbirne, Grüne Pöllerbirne, Bichlbirne.
- Classification
- Not classified under any recorded system
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Established as a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Tannin and structure
- Origin
- Upper Austria
- Species
- Pyrus communis
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
How it is classified
No classification scheme has been recorded for Grüne Pichelbirne. That is common outside Europe: the English, French and Spanish systems were each built for their own fruit, and a cultivar grown where none of them applies simply has no class. What the fruit contributes to a blend is described below regardless — the class is a shorthand for that, not a substitute.
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 | Very high | |
| Tannin | Heavy | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Marked | |
| Astringency | Harsh | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Full |
Klosterneuburg 2007–2008: 10.8 g/L acid as tartaric and 3.5 g/L residual sugar in the must, 2 830 mg/L total phenols in the fruit. Austrian perry pear composition is reported on a different acid convention from every other figure on this site: Austrian wine law expresses titratable acidity as tartaric acid, and the research follows it, where English, French and Spanish practice all report as malic. The same juice reads roughly a quarter lower as tartaric. CiderHQ stores what was published and names the basis rather than converting.
Sharp and, at harvest, heavily astringent — and the astringency is largely gone by the time the fruit is pressed.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Grüne Pichelbirne, 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.
Measured on the juice
Measured on juice as pressed, before fermentation. This is where most cider analysis lives and what the classification schemes are defined on.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Malic acid | 7.4 g/L | Versuchsgut Haschhof, Klosterneuburg, Lower Austria | 2007Modern analysis | Wurm, Gössinger, Wendelin and Korntheuer, HBLA und Bundesamt für Wein- und Obstbau Klosterneuburg, in Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg 61 (2011): 236–246 |
| Phenolic acids | 592.9 mg/L | Versuchsgut Haschhof, Klosterneuburg, Lower Austria | 2007Modern analysis | Wurm, Gössinger, Wendelin and Korntheuer, HBLA und Bundesamt für Wein- und Obstbau Klosterneuburg, in Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg 61 (2011): 236–246 |
| Titratable acidity | 10.8 g/L | Versuchsgut Haschhof, Klosterneuburg, Lower Austria | 2008Modern analysis | Wurm, Gössinger, Wendelin and Korntheuer, HBLA und Bundesamt für Wein- und Obstbau Klosterneuburg, in Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg 61 (2011): 236–246 |
| Total phenolics | 2830.0 mg/L | Versuchsgut Haschhof, Klosterneuburg, Lower Austria | 2007Modern analysis | Wurm, Gössinger, Wendelin and Korntheuer, HBLA und Bundesamt für Wein- und Obstbau Klosterneuburg, in Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg 61 (2011): 236–246 |
Measured on the finished drink
Measured on the finished drink, after fermentation. Not comparable with the juice figures above: fermentation, fining and time move all of these, and phenolics in particular fall substantially.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alcohol by volume | 7.2 % ABV | Versuchsgut Haschhof, Klosterneuburg, Lower Austria | 2008Modern analysis | Wurm, Gössinger, Wendelin and Korntheuer, HBLA und Bundesamt für Wein- und Obstbau Klosterneuburg, in Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg 61 (2011): 236–246 |
| Residual sugar | 3.5 g/L | Versuchsgut Haschhof, Klosterneuburg, Lower Austria | 2008Modern analysis | Wurm, Gössinger, Wendelin and Korntheuer, HBLA und Bundesamt für Wein- und Obstbau Klosterneuburg, in Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg 61 (2011): 236–246 |
How these were measured
- Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy on single-variety must, one season. The fruit was stored before processing — the interval between the two dates on this record — and the storage is the point of the trial rather than an accident: the authors report that it broke tannin down to the level where very little fining was needed.
- Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy on single-variety must, one season. The fruit was stored before processing — the interval between the two dates on this record — and the storage is the point of the trial rather than an accident: the authors report that it broke tannin down to the level where very little fining was needed. Titrated to pH 8.1 with 0.1 N sodium hydroxide and reported as TARTARIC acid, which is the Austrian wine-law convention and is not the malic convention every English and French figure on this site uses. The two are not interchangeable: the same juice reads about a quarter lower expressed as tartaric. CiderHQ stores the figure as the source reported it and states the basis rather than converting.
- Folin-Ciocalteu after removal of sugars, acids and sulphur dioxide on a C18 cartridge. Not comparable with a Löwenthal permanganate figure, which is what the historic English tables report.
- Chlorogenic acid by HPLC (ODS-Hypersil reversed phase, detection at 280 and 320 nm).
- Ion chromatography on fruit from trees on Quince A rootstock.
- A single-variety must made experimentally from trial-orchard fruit, not a commercial Most. What it shows is what the fruit can reach unaided in one Lower Austrian season.
- Titrated to pH 8.1 with 0.1 N sodium hydroxide and reported as TARTARIC acid, which is the Austrian wine-law convention and is not the malic convention every English and French figure on this site uses. The two are not interchangeable: the same juice reads about a quarter lower expressed as tartaric. CiderHQ stores the figure as the source reported it and states the basis rather than converting.
- Measured on the fruit at harvest in 2007. The same programme found that storing the fruit before pressing collapses this figure — in several varieties by more than an order of magnitude — so a harvest phenolic reading is not what reaches the must.
- Chlorogenic acid alone rather than the whole phenolic acid fraction. It is the largest single phenolic compound in these juices and it browns readily without contributing much taste.
- Fruit rather than must, and from the Quince A rootstock only; the same trial measured Pyrodwarf separately and the rootstock moved the figure.
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.
Klosterneuburg Mostbirnen spindle trial
Versuchsgut Haschhof, HBLA und Bundesamt für Wein- und Obstbau, Klosterneuburg, Lower Austria · 2007–2008 · Wurm, Gössinger, Wendelin and Korntheuer, HBLA und Bundesamt für Wein- und Obstbau Klosterneuburg, in Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg 61 (2011): 236–246
Pannonian-influenced continental, on the Danube north-west of Vienna: warmer and markedly drier than the Mostviertel proper, which is the perry pear country these cultivars come from. The trial orchard is a research planting rather than a working Mostviertel orchard, and the difference is worth holding in mind before a figure here is read as typical of the region.
- Harvest
- Picked 18.09.2008, pressed 23.10.2008 after storage
- Held as
- Listed as “Grüne Pichelbirne”
Fourteen Austrian perry pear cultivars planted spring 2002 at 4 × 2 m, trained as spindles on Quince A with an interstem and on Pyrodwarf, managed to organic rules; first cropping 2006. Dissolved solids by hand refractometer in °Oechsle; titratable acidity by titration to pH 8.1 with 0.1 N sodium hydroxide, reported as tartaric acid; malic and citric acid by ion chromatography; total phenols by Folin–Ciocalteu after C18 clean-up; individual phenolics by HPLC; must alcohol, sugar and acid by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
Picked in mid September at Klosterneuburg and pressed in late October, after around five weeks of storage. The gap is the process, not a delay.
Reported by the trial among the more fruitful varieties, with alternation unavoidable without crop-load management.
Not recorded. Austrian sources do not publish flowering groups or bands for Mostbirnen in any form CiderHQ has reached.
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.
Juice and pressing
- 10.8 g/L acid as tartaric — the sharpest must in the trial
- 2 830 mg/L total phenols in the fruit at harvest, falling to 110 by pressing
- 7.4 g/L malic acid in the fruit
How it is used
- Made as a single-variety Most, which is the Mostviertel signature.
- Its high tannin makes it useful for blending into musts that will not clear.
On its own
Established as a single-varietal cider
Made as a single-variety Most in the Mostviertel, where single-variety pear Most is the regional practice rather than the exception.
About Grüne Pichelbirne
Grüne Pichelbirne is the sharpest of the eleven Austrian perry pears whose must the Klosterneuburg trial analysed: 10.8 grams per litre of acid, against 4.0 for the mildest. It is also among the most phenolic, at 2 830 milligrams per litre of total phenols in the fruit — more than four times a dessert pear measured in the same trial.
What makes it interesting beyond the numbers is that the same trial measured its phenolics twice, at harvest and at pressing weeks later, and found 4 290 milligrams per litre falling to 110. That is a collapse of two orders of magnitude, and it is deliberate: the storage is there to break the tannin down. The Austrian ministry describes the same practice in prose — letting the fruit after-ripen before pressing raises the sugar and reduces the very high tannin and acid.
The English tradition calls a version of this sweating and the French answer the astringency problem by keeving instead. Austria does neither exactly; it stores hard fruit until the phenolics have gone, and the figures show how completely they go. A reader comparing a harvest phenolic reading for this pear with an English juice figure is comparing something that never reached a vat with something that did.
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
The Austrian agriculture ministry reports it as first mentioned in 1822 by Georg Liegel and believed native to Upper Austria for three centuries before that. The 1822 date is a first mention rather than an origin.
Why it matters
- The widest gap between harvest and pressing phenolics of any fruit measured on this site: 4 290 mg/L down to 110.
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.
Winnal’s Longdon
The most highly regarded of the four Longdon pears, giving a perry with more tannin and more staying power than most of the Three Counties crop.
Betty Prosser
A Monmouthshire perry pear named after a woman about whom nothing else is recorded, and one of the Welsh cultivars recovered by survey work.
Bunch
An early-ripening, very late-flowering Three Counties perry pear whose juice carries moderate acid and unusually generous assimilable nitrogen.
Dymock Red
A red-fruited perry pear from the Gloucestershire parish of Dymock, one of the most concentrated perry pear districts in England.
Stieglbirne
An Austrian Most pear of high harvest phenolics and moderate must, and one of the four the trial named as exceeding 3 000 milligrams per litre of total phenols at picking.
Norton
A Three Counties perry pear named after one of the several Nortons in the region, giving a moderately sharp juice with some tannin.
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.
- How long can apples be kept before pressing
- What does sweating apples mean — Sweating is holding picked fruit in a heap or store for days or weeks before milling, so it softens, loses water and gains sugar concentration. Perry pears in particular are usually held until they yield to the thumb.
- What is juice blending
- What is the main austrian most pear — Speckbirne, which Austrian wine law names for a lower acid floor. It is also the clearest caution in the Austrian data: the Klosterneuburg trial pressed it twice and got two entirely different results.
- Is most made outside the mostviertel — Yes. Upper Austria carries the same pear and apple Most tradition as the Mostviertel next door, on a large orchard base, and the boundary between them is administrative rather than cultural.
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.
Prüfung ausgewählter Mostbirnensorten als Spindel unter Bio-Produktionsbedingungen
Wurm, Gössinger, Wendelin and Korntheuer, HBLA und Bundesamt für Wein- und Obstbau Klosterneuburg, in Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg 61 (2011): 236–246 · research institute · passage verified 2026-08-25 · covers 2002–2010
Fourteen Austrian perry pears trialled at the research station that also runs Austria’s statutory fruit-wine analysis panel. The only measured Austrian Mostbirnen data CiderHQ has found, and the first Austrian figures on the site. Its tables are scanned images with no text layer, so every figure published here was read from the rendered pages directly rather than from an extraction, and the source’s own typesetting error — Knollbirne’s residual sugar printed “3,o” — is recorded rather than normalised. The acid convention is tartaric rather than malic, which is Austrian wine law and is stated on every measurement taken from it.
Österreichische Mostbirnensorten
Bundesministerium für Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Klima- und Umweltschutz, Regionen und Wasserwirtschaft (BMLUK), register of traditional Austrian foods, entry 191 · government · retrieved 2026-08-25
The Austrian agriculture ministry’s own account of its perry pears, in its register of traditional foods. It carries no analytical figures at all — no acid, no sugar, no tannin — and is cited here for synonymy, geography, dates and the ministry’s own descriptions of what the fruit tastes like. Its estimate of over 400 Mostbirne types in Austria is labelled by the ministry itself as an estimate, and CiderHQ repeats that hedge rather than the number alone.
Obstweinverordnung, BGBl. II Nr. 18/2014, consolidated
Republic of Austria, made under §§ 35, 36 and 37(1) of the Weingesetz 2009; consolidated text published by the Bundeskellereiinspektion · legislation · passage verified 2026-08-25
The instrument that decides what Most legally is in Austria, and the answer is: a fermented drink. That single fact is the one most often got wrong in English writing, because Most means the unfermented juice in Switzerland and is ambiguous in Germany. The ordinance also names two pear cultivars individually — Speckbirne and Schweizer Wasserbirne — in a derogation lowering their minimum acidity, which is a legislature encoding pomology. Retrieved from the federal cellar inspectorate’s mirror because the Austrian legal information system refused every automated request.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.