Perry pear
Grüne Winawitz
The one Austrian perry pear measured as no more phenolic than a dessert pear, which makes it the exception that defines the category.
Also written Winawitzbirne, Grüne Winawitzbirne.
- Classification
- Not classified under any recorded system
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Bulk juice
- Origin
- Austria
- Species
- Pyrus communis
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Severely biennial — a substantial crop only every other year
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
How it is classified
No classification scheme has been recorded for Grüne Winawitz. 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 | High | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Klosterneuburg 2007–2008: 650 mg/L total phenols against a dessert-pear control of 580; must at 6.4 per cent alcohol and 8.9 g/L acid as tartaric. 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, light and — unusually for a Most pear — barely more phenolic than a dessert pear.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Grüne Winawitz, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phenolic acids | 47.5 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 | 8.9 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 | 650.0 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 | 6.4 % 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 | 3.8 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 |
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).
- 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.
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 16.10.2008 after storage
- Held as
- Listed as “Grüne Winawitz”
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
- Severely biennial — a substantial crop only every other year
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
Picked in mid September at Klosterneuburg and pressed in mid October.
Reported among the least fruitful and most strongly alternate-bearing varieties.
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
- Only 650 mg/L total phenols — against a dessert-pear control of 580
- 6.4 per cent alcohol, the lowest must in the trial
- 8.9 g/L acid as tartaric
- Just 47 mg/L chlorogenic acid, the lowest in the trial
How it is used
- One of the Hausruck Most cultivars named by the Austrian ministry.
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Low in phenolics and low in alcohol, which leaves little for a single-variety Most to be built on.
About Grüne Winawitz
Grüne Winawitz is the outlier in the Klosterneuburg dataset, and the useful kind. Of thirteen Austrian perry pears measured for total phenols in 2007, twelve ran between 1 320 and 3 390 milligrams per litre. This one measured 650 — against 580 for Gellerts Butterbirne, the dessert pear the trial used as a control.
The trial says so explicitly: Grüne Winawitz alone sits as low in total phenols as the table variety. Which means the thing that makes a perry pear a perry pear is a matter of degree with at least one documented exception, and that the Austrian ministry’s working definition — pear varieties not suitable for eating because of their astringent phenol content — does not quite hold for every pear the tradition uses.
Its must is otherwise ordinary: 6.4 per cent alcohol, the lowest in the trial, on 8.9 grams per litre of acid.
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
Recorded by the Austrian ministry among the cultivars considered Austrian in origin.
Why it matters
- The one Austrian perry pear measured as no more phenolic than a table pear, which makes the category’s boundary visible.
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.
Blakeney Red
The most widely planted perry pear of the Three Counties, taking its name from the Gloucestershire village of Blakeney and grown for perry, for canning and, during the First World War, for dye.
Berllanderi Green
A Monmouthshire perry pear named after the farm near Raglan where it was found, and known from a very small number of trees.
Green Horse
A Herefordshire perry pear of large fruit and vigorous growth, giving a moderately sharp juice used both alone and in blends.
Brown Bess
A russeted Three Counties perry pear whose name is shared with an infantry musket, without either being named for the other on any recorded evidence.
High Pear
A mid-season Three Counties perry pear of balanced juice and reasonable nitrogen, named — as far as anyone knows — for the height of the tree.
Holmer
A perry pear named for a parish now absorbed into the northern edge of Hereford, and a marker of how far perry orchards once reached into what is now a city.
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
- Which perry pear gives an elderflower note — Dorschbirne, on the Austrian agriculture ministry’s own description. It is also the most phenolic Austrian perry pear measured at Klosterneuburg and the highest-yielding in that trial.
- 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.