Perry pear
Moorcroft
An early Malvern-country perry pear, known as Malvern Hills as often as by its own name, and at the centre of one of the sharpest identity disputes in perry.
Also written Moor Croft.
- Classification
- Medium sharp — Perry pear classification
- Harvest
- Early (September)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Early season, Acid lift, Aroma
- Origin
- The Malvern district, on the Worcestershire and Herefordshire border
- Species
- Pyrus communis
- Flowering
- Mid flowering band
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
How it is classified
Perry pear classification
Medium sharp
Moderate acid with low to moderate tannin.
Described as a moderately acid pear of low tannin. Accounts differ over how sharp it is, partly because the fruit changes fast: picked early it reads sharper, and left to fall it reads softer and flatter.
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 | Moderate | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Long Ashton perry pear description of a medium-sharp, low-tannin juice, tempered by the wide variation reported between early and late gathering.
A clean, moderately sharp juice with very little grip, aromatic when the fruit is milled promptly and noticeably duller when it is not.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Moorcroft, 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 gravity2 readings, spanning 1.063–1.066 SG | 1.066 SG | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England | 1903–1963Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology |
| 1.063 SG | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) | |
| Titratable acidity2 readings, spanning 5.0–5.2 g/L | 5.0 g/L | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England | 1903–1963Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology |
| 5.2 g/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) | |
| Total tannin2 readings, spanning 170.0–760.0 mg/L | 170.0 mg/L | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England | 1903–1963Historic analysis | National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology |
| 760.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) | |
| Free amino nitrogen | 6.3 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Phenolic acids | 120.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Proline | 123.1 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Total amino acids | 45.2 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2024Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Total phenolics | 880.0 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.
- 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.
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
- Third to fourth week of September, difficult to shake
- Growth habit
- Large
- Bearing
- Light to medium
- Held as
- Listed as “Moorcroft”
Medium acidity and tannin, astringent, usually good and often excellent quality, high gravity. Once very popular and widely grown.
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.
The source prints this variety as “Moorcroft [Stinking Bishop]”, treating the two names as one pear. CiderHQ holds Moorcroft and Stinking Bishop as separate records and does not merge them on the strength of one bracketed alias; the source’s equation is recorded on both pages as evidence about the naming, not acted on as a correction to it.
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 Mo-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
- Early
- Flowering
- Mid flowering band
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
September, and among the earlier perry pears. Early ripeness is the cultivar’s main practical value: it lets a mill start work before the main crop arrives. It is also the reason its fruit is so often wasted, since an early drop in warm weather rots within days. The National Perry Pear Collection records it ripening in the middle or later part of September at Hartpury, which agrees with the window recorded here.
Very short. This is the cultivar most often cited when perry makers describe the gap between unripe and rotten as a matter of days.
An early flowerer, which exposes it to spring frost in the Malvern country more than mid-season cultivars. 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 | — |
| Spring frost at blossom | high | Early flowering on frost-prone Malvern slopes costs whole crops in some seasons. |
Juice and pressing
- Moderate acid, low tannin
- Aromatic when fresh, flat when the fruit is held
How it is used
- An early-season pressing pear, worked first in the season and blended with later, more structured fruit.
- Used in the Malvern district as a perry pear in its own right under the Malvern Hills name.
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
Made alone it gives a light, early-drinking perry with little structure. Makers who bottle it single-variety generally do so to catch the aromatic character, which does not survive long in the bottle.
About Moorcroft
Moorcroft is a Malvern pear that carries two standard names and possibly a third. It is called Malvern Hills as freely as it is called Moorcroft, and the two names appear side by side in nursery lists, orchard records and modern collections without anyone treating the difference as meaningful. That is normal for perry pears: the name follows the district, and the district had more than one way of referring to itself.
The third name is the problem. Stinking Bishop, the pear that lends its name to a washed-rind cheese, is given by several accounts as a synonym of Moorcroft and by others as a separate Dymock cultivar with its own history. CiderHQ holds both as records and marks the equation as unresolved, because collapsing them would assert an identity the evidence does not settle and separating them silently would hide a real dispute. This is the ordinary condition of perry pear identity rather than an unusual case.
As fruit, Moorcroft is early and fragile. It ripens in September, ahead of most of the Three Counties crop, which makes it useful for starting a mill and dangerous for anyone who is not ready. The juice is moderately sharp with almost no tannin, and its aromatic quality is the first thing to go if the fruit sits in a heap. Blended, it lifts an early perry; alone, it gives something light that does not keep. The trees are large, flower early enough to be caught by frost on the Malvern slopes, and crop unevenly from year to year.
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
Parish tradition rather than record. The two names in circulation point at a district rather than at a tree, and no raiser or date is documented.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Choke Pear | Regional name | Recorded as a synonym of Moorcroft by the National Perry Pear Collection. |
| Chokers | Regional name | Recorded as a synonym of Moorcroft by the National Perry Pear Collection. |
| Malvern Pear | Regional name | Recorded as a synonym of Moorcroft by the National Perry Pear Collection. |
| Malvern Hills | Regional name | Worcestershire and Herefordshire. The standard alternate name, used interchangeably with Moorcroft across the Malvern country and in most published perry writing. |
| Stinking Bishop | Disputed identity | Several accounts give Stinking Bishop as a further synonym of Moorcroft. Others treat Stinking Bishop as a distinct Dymock pear. CiderHQ holds both records and marks the equation unresolved. |
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
- A working example of how far perry pear synonymy can run: one fruit, two standard names, and a third name that may or may not belong to it.
Related cultivars
Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.
Often confused with
Stinking Bishop
Some accounts treat the two as one cultivar. The dispute is recorded on both records and resolved on neither.
Similar role
Thorn
Another early pear used to open the pressing season, and confused with Moorcroft in orchard records where neither name was written down carefully.
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.
Hendre Huffcap
The most highly regarded of the Huffcap group of perry pears, taking its first name from a Monmouthshire farm and its second from a word for a drink strong enough to lift a hat.
Thorn
One of the oldest named English perry pears, recorded in the seventeenth century and still valued for a quick, light perry that is ready before most others.
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.
Gregg’s Pit
A Herefordshire perry pear named after the Much Marcle holding where the original tree still stands, and one of the few perry pears whose parent tree can be visited.
Stinking Bishop
A Dymock perry pear named after a nineteenth-century grower called Bishop, and now better known through the washed-rind cheese that is bathed in its perry.
Burgundy
A deeply coloured Monmouthshire perry pear, one of the Welsh cultivars located and propagated by survey work after being reduced to a handful of trees.
Styles it is characteristic of
Perry
The fermented drink of pears, a tradition parallel to cider rather than derived from it, in which unfermentable sorbitol leaves a sweetness the maker never chose.
Sparkling perry
Perry carrying a persistent bubble, a presentation that suits pear’s aromatics and residual sorbitol and has a documented history going back to the seventeenth century.
Still perry
Perry without carbonation, in which the fruit’s sorbitol sweetness and its texture carry a drink that has no bubble to lean on.
Three Counties cider
The shared cider and perry tradition of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, defined by a common fruit inventory and by the perry pear orchards that survive nowhere else in comparable numbers.
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.
- 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.
- How long can apples be kept before pressing
- 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.
- What is still perry
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
Gloucestershire Orchard Trust · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.