France

The tradition

What cider making here is, on its own terms — the fruit it uses, the shape of the drink, and the part it plays.

• Cider is a table drink taken with food, served cold in a bowl or wide glass, and expected to be sweet to off-dry and low in alcohol — commonly well under the strength of an English farmhouse cider.
• Sweetness is achieved by arresting fermentation through nutrient starvation rather than by adding sugar back, which is why keeving is central to French practice and marginal almost everywhere else.
• The orchard system and the fermentation method are one decision: standard trees over permanently grazed pasture keep fruit nitrogen low, and low-nitrogen juice is what makes keeving reliable.
• French fruit is sorted into five families rather than four classes, with a distinct amère group — very high tannin, very low acid — that the English scheme has no name for.
• Distillation is integral rather than incidental: Calvados and its regional variants give an orchard a second and often more valuable destination for its crop, and have underwritten the survival of standard trees.
• Perry is a legally separate drink with its own appellation in the Domfrontais, where a named pear variety must supply the greater part of the blend.

How cider is defined and taxed here

A legal definition is not a description of good practice. It sets the floor a drink must clear to be sold under the word, and the floor is in a different place in every country — which is why the same label term can mean two quite different things either side of a border.

• French law defines cidre by its raw material and composition — fermented from apple must or apple juice, with rules on what may and may not be added — so the category is described by a production standard rather than only by a tax threshold.
• Appellation d’origine contrôlée status extends to cider, perry and cider spirits. A specification fixes the geographic area, the permitted varieties, the orchard type, minimum juice requirements and elements of method, and is administered by the national origin and quality institute.
• Coverage is partial and this matters: several genuine cider districts, including the Perche and much of Maine, have no appellation and work under the general national rules.
• Sweetness categories — doux, demi-sec, brut — are defined by residual sugar, so the words on a French label carry a specification an English "medium" does not.
• Cider is taxed as a fermented beverage rather than as a beer or a spirit, at a structurally lower level than distilled products, and labelling follows the European Union framework for alcoholic strength, allergens and sulphites.
• The requirement in several appellations that carbonation arise from fermentation in the bottle rather than from injected gas is a method rule, not a compositional one — an unusual degree of specificity in drinks law.

Cider and perry in France

Regions

The cider-making areas recorded within this country. Where an area has sub-regions, they are named on its card.

• Breizh

  Brittany

  France’s other great cider region, with its own Breton vocabulary, its own fruit and a rustic, often more acidic and phenolic style drunk from a bowl alongside buckwheat galettes.

• Ipar Euskal Herria

  French Basque Country

  The northern Basque provinces, where a cider tradition shared with Gipuzkoa across the border was largely lost in the twentieth century and deliberately rebuilt from the 1980s, complete with the cider-house season and the txotx pour.

• Region

  Le Maine

  The historic province south of Normandy where cider and perry were the ordinary rural drink, and where a reduced but continuous farm tradition persists without a protected regional name.

• Normandie

  Normandy

  The largest and most codified cider region in France, where fruit is grown in grazed orchard-meadows, juice is stripped of nutrient by keeving before fermentation, and the finished cider is expected to be sweet, aromatic and low in alcohol rather than dry.

  CotentinDomfrontaisPays d’Auge

• Le Perche

  Perche

  A hilly, hedged country on the southern edge of Normandy where cider and perry are made within a livestock landscape of orchard-meadows, without the appellation apparatus of the Auge or the Domfrontais.

• Region

  Savoie

  An Alpine fruit region whose apples and pears are grown principally for the table under a protected geographical indication, and where cider is a small and largely modern activity rather than an inherited tradition.

How fruit is classified here

One scheme among several. It was built for this country's fruit and answers this country's question about it.

• Classification des variétés à cidre

  French cider apple families

  A five-family French scheme built on the same two axes as the English one but cut differently, with a middle class the English system has no name for — and, unusually, with its thresholds written into law.

Styles made here

Categories whose definition or characteristic practice belongs to this country.

• Cidre Pays d’Auge

  The controlled appellation cider of the Pays d’Auge in Calvados, made by keeving from bitter Norman fruit and bottle-conditioned to a low alcohol and a high residual sugar.

• 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.

• Bottle-conditioned cider

  Cider that completes a fermentation inside its sealed bottle, generating its own carbonation and, in most cases, leaving a yeast deposit behind.

• Cidre de Normandie

  Protected Normandy cider made from the region’s bitter and bittersweet fruit, characteristically low in alcohol, sweet-edged and lightly sparkling.

• Cidre défécqué

  Keeved cider

  Cider clarified before fermentation by a pectin gel that strips nutrients from the juice, producing a slow ferment that stops naturally with sugar still in solution.

• Poiré

  French perry, made chiefly in southern Normandy and Maine from local perry pears, characteristically sweet, low in alcohol and firmly sparkling.

• Poiré Domfront

  The controlled appellation perry of the Domfrontais in southern Normandy, made predominantly from the Plant de Blanc pear on high-standard trees and finished sweet, low in alcohol and bottle-conditioned.

• Cidre brut

  The dry tier of the French cider scale, defined since 2025 by a density no greater than 1.016 with an acquired strength of at least 3.5% vol — correspondingly more of the juice’s sugar converted to alcohol.

• Cidre de Bretagne

  Protected Breton cider, built on a distinct western fruit inventory and generally drier, lighter and more acid-led than its Norman counterpart.

• Cidre demi-sec

  The middle tier of the French cider scale, sitting between doux and brut on density and forming the commercial centre of ground for much French cider.

• Cidre doux

  The sweet tier of the French cider scale, defined since 2025 by a density at or above 1.024 together with an acquired strength no greater than 3% vol, so that the sweetness is demonstrably unfermented juice sugar.

• Cidre fermier

  Farm-made French cider, pressed and fermented on the holding that grew the fruit, sold as an agricultural product of that farm rather than as a regional or industrial one.

• Pommeau

  A blend of fresh apple juice and apple brandy, mixed before fermentation so that the spirit prevents it, then aged in oak.

Protected designations and national definitions

Names the law reserves, and the instruments that reserve them. Each page carries the date the record was taken.

• AOC

  Calvados

  The Norman appellation for apple and pear spirit distilled from cider or perry and matured in oak, and the broadest of the three Calvados appellations.

• PGI

  Cidre de Normandie / Cidre normand

  The protected geographical indication covering cider made in Normandy and a defined margin around it, the broadest of the French cider designations by volume and by area.

• AOP

  Cidre du Pays d’Auge

  The strictest French cider appellation: a closed area, a closed variety list, a mandated blend balance, compulsory maceration and pectic settling, and a sparkle that may only come from fermentation finishing in the bottle.

• AOP

  Poiré Domfront

  France’s appellation of origin for perry, covering the Domfrontais in southern Normandy and requiring a substantial proportion of the local Plant de Blanc pear from tall-stem trees.

• AOC

  Calvados Domfrontais

  The Calvados appellation of the Domfrontais, distinguished by a required proportion of pears in the base and by column distillation.

• AOC

  Calvados Pays d’Auge

  The Pays d’Auge appellation for Calvados, restricted to the same Norman district as the cider appellation and requiring double distillation in a pot still.

• national-definition

  Cidre and poiré in French national law

  The French national rules that decide what may be sold as *cidre* or *poiré* outside any appellation, and that set the sweetness terms used across the market.

• PGI

  Cidre de Bretagne / Cidre breton

  The protected geographical indication for Breton cider, covering the Brittany region and its historic margins and sitting above the tighter Cornouaille appellation.

• AOP

  Cornouaille

  Brittany’s cider appellation of origin, covering a defined area of southern Finistère and restricted to traditional Breton cider varieties fermented as pure juice.

• AOP

  Cidre du Cotentin

  The appellation of origin for cider from the Cotentin peninsula, built on a small group of local bitter varieties and the most recently recognised of the Norman cider appellations.

• AOP

  Cidre du Perche

  The newest French cider appellation, recognised in 2020 for the wooded bocage on the Norman marches, and one of only two that forbid pitching yeast into the first fermentation.

• AOC

  Pommeau de Normandie

  The Norman appellation for pommeau, a fortified apéritif made by blending unfermented apple must with Calvados and maturing the blend in oak.

• AOC

  Pommeau de Bretagne

  The Breton appellation for pommeau, blending unfermented Breton apple must with Breton cider spirit and maturing the result in oak.

• AOC

  Pommeau du Maine

  The appellation for pommeau made in the Maine, the third of the French pommeau designations and the least widely distributed.

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 do you pour bottle conditioned cider — Stand the bottle upright for a day, chill it, and pour in one continuous movement, stopping when the sediment reaches the shoulder. Some traditions deliberately rouse the sediment instead, and both are defensible.
• What does brut mean on a cider — On a French cidre, *brut* means dry, and in practice it also implies a higher alcohol than *doux* because more of the sugar has fermented. Its French thresholds are not the same as champagne’s.
• What is keeved cider — A cider made naturally sweet by starving the yeast rather than by adding sugar. Keeving strips nutrients out of the juice before fermentation, so the ferment slows and stops with fruit sugar still in it, and nothing has been put back.
• What is the difference between french cidre and english cider — French cidre is usually sweeter, weaker and more carbonated, because fermentation is arrested while sugar remains. English cider is more often fermented dry and finished still or lightly sparkling, and is stronger for it.
• What does cidre de bretagne igp actually guarantee — That the apples were grown and the cider made in the area, and that the fruit met a measured tannin floor. It permits concentrate to 40 per cent of the must, added water and injected gas, all of which the French appellations of origin forbid.

Where to go next

• All cider regions and countries — The other traditions, grouped by the family each belongs to.
• Protected designations — Every reserved name on CiderHQ, grouped by country.
• Styles — What defines each category, and what legitimately varies inside it.

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 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.

• Décret n° 2025-162 du 20 février 2025 portant application de l’article L. 412-1 du code de la consommation en ce qui concerne les cidres et poirés

  Légifrance, JORF texte n° JORFTEXT000051223792 · legislation · retrieved 2026-08-24 · covers In force from 1 July 2025; “artisanal” and “rosé” from 1 January 2026

  Opened on 2026-08-24, and it turned out that the entry CiderHQ had was describing a repealed instrument. The décret of 20 February 2025 replaces the 1953 décret and the 1987 one that amended it, and it changes the thing this site had been repeating: the doux, demi-sec and brut categories are no longer residual-sugar bands. They are now defined on acquired alcoholic strength together with density at 20 °C, an extra-brut tier has been added, and the four bands deliberately overlap so that a producer can place a product with a hydrometer rather than a sugar analysis. The pages that said otherwise have been corrected. What could not be done is a verbatim read: legifrance.gouv.fr returns HTTP 403 to retrieval, so the text was read through a summarising fetch and every operative figure was then checked independently against the UNICID interbranch briefing, which reproduces the table. The two agree.

• 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 recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement (INRAE)

  INRAE · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24

  French national agricultural research. Its Angers programme produced much of the published work on apple procyanidin chain length and on the relationship between polymer size, bitterness and astringency.

• eAmbrosia — the EU geographical indications register

  European Commission · designation authority · registered as competent for this subject

  The single authoritative register of EU PDO, PGI and TSG names, carrying each product specification. Cider and perry designations across France, Spain and elsewhere resolve here.