Country
Germany
The country of Apfelwein, Viez and Most: dry, sharp, low-tannin apple wine made from meadow orchard fruit, framed and taxed as a wine rather than as a cider, with its own vessels and measures.
Deutschland.
- ISO country code
- DE
- Level
- Sovereign state
- Native name
- Deutschland
- Regions recorded
- 5
- Protected designations
- 1
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.
- The German drink is framed linguistically as a wine — Apfelwein — and that framing is accurate to how it is served: dry, still or lightly sparkling, at table, in a defined measure, with food.
- The fruit is culinary and multipurpose rather than tannic cider fruit, so the drink is high in acid and low in phenolics, and its character is leanness rather than grip.
- Almost all of it comes from Streuobstwiesen — meadow orchards of standard trees over hay meadow or pasture — which are a land-use system rather than a plantation, and which are now conserved primarily as habitat.
- Regional names denote genuinely distinct traditions: Apfelwein in Hessen, Viez in the Moselle and Saar, Most in Swabia, each with its own vessel and vocabulary.
- Hessian practice includes adding a small quantity of service tree fruit — Speierling — to the must for tannin and clarity, which is a solution to low-tannin fruit found in no other major tradition.
- Dilution is normal and named rather than furtive: apple wine cut with sparkling water or with lemonade is an ordinary menu item.
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.
- German wine law does not reach apple wine. The Weingesetz governs wine and other products of viticulture, and fermented fruit juice sits instead under the Alkoholhaltige Getränke-Verordnung, which places it in a category called weinähnliche Getränke — wine-like drinks. That framing is why the drink is called a wine and read as one.
- The remarkable thing about the binding instrument is how little it contains. It defines the category by starting material, sets two carbonation thresholds — 1.0 to 2.5 bar for the semi-sparkling class, 3.0 bar and above for the sparkling one — forbids the use of grape products in fruit wine, and governs how the word Wein may be compounded with a fruit name. It sets no minimum alcohol, no acidity, no extract and no permitted-additions list for Apfelwein at all.
- Every number is therefore in the Leitsätze, the food-code guidelines, which are formally qualified expert opinion rather than legislation and which courts treat as evidence of customary trade practice. Under the recast of 23 January 2026, an Apfelwein or Birnenwein has at least 5 % vol, at least 18 g/l sugar-free extract and no more than 1.0 g/l volatile acid as acetic; sugar may be added only up to a total must weight of 55 °Oechsle; and for apple wine, service tree, rowan or quince may be used.
- Swabian Most is a separate food-code entry rather than a regional word for the same drink, and the numbers say so: at least 4 % vol, at least 12 g/l extract, and up to a third water. A drink lawfully labelled Schwäbischer Most is weaker and more dilute than one labelled Apfelwein, by design.
- The 2026 recast created a named cider category for the first time — Apfel Cider and Birnen Cider — running from 1.2 to 8.5 % vol at 1.0 to 2.5 bar, with honey, juice or concentrate, natural apple or pear aroma, and water to as much as half the volume. It is defined so as to admit most of what the Apfelwein entry excludes, and it means the English word now has a German meaning distinct from Apfelwein.
- The same recast separated the word Speierling from the fruit. The flavour indication continues to mean a tannic, acid-led apple wine; only the phrase mit Speierling-Früchten now indicates that any service tree fruit was actually used.
- Hessischer Apfelwein holds a protected geographical indication, registered in 2010 and covering the whole federal state. Its specification is far stricter than the food code: 100 per cent fruit content, complete fermentation, no added water and no added sugar.
- There is no German acid-and-tannin classification of pressing fruit. Varieties are described by use, juice yield, acidity and keeping quality, without any equivalent of the English quadrants or the French families.
- Meadow orchards, which supply much of the fruit, are supported through agri-environment and nature conservation policy rather than through drinks regulation — so the future of the raw material sits in a different rulebook from the drink.
Definitions, minimum juice contents and duty bands are amended, and CiderHQ records the structure of a rule rather than reproducing figures it has not verified against the instrument itself. Anyone making a commercial decision should read the current legislation or the revenue authority’s own guidance. The sources at the foot of this page are where to start.
Cider and perry in Germany
German Apfelwein is routinely mistranslated into English as cider and then judged as a poor one, which misses what it is. It is a dry, sharp, pale, low-tannin drink of moderate strength, served from a stoneware jug into a small ribbed glass in a measure of about three hundred millilitres, in taverns that exist to serve it and that offer a fixed range of food alongside. The word wine in its name is the tradition telling you how to read it.
Its leanness is a consequence of the fruit. Germany has no tradition of tannic cider apples. What it has is meadow orchards — Streuobstwiesen — full of culinary and multipurpose varieties grown as a second crop from hay meadow, high in acid and nearly free of phenolics. The Hessian answer to the resulting lack of structure is remarkable: adding a small proportion of fruit from the service tree, a different genus entirely, for tannin and clarification.
The country contains several genuinely distinct traditions under different names. Apfelwein in the Rhine-Main basin, Viez around Trier and in the Saarland, Most in Swabia: related drinks with different words, different vessels and different social settings, and locals do not treat the terms as interchangeable. The word Most in particular is a trap, since it means fermented drink in some regions and unfermented must in others.
The most important regulatory fact is that meadow orchards survive on conservation policy rather than on fruit prices. Standing trees have fallen heavily since the mid-twentieth century because full-size trees are expensive to pick, and what keeps the remainder standing is agri-environment payment, habitat designation and volunteer organisations. The long-term future of German apple wine is therefore tied to land policy at least as much as to what people choose to drink.
Regions
The cider-making areas recorded within this country. Where an area has sub-regions, they are named on its card.
Region
Baden-Württemberg
The largest meadow orchard landscape in Europe, where Most is a farm drink made from mixed standard-tree fruit and where the orchards are now defended as habitat as much as a source of juice.
Region
Hessen
Germany’s principal apple wine region, where Apfelwein is dry, sharp, low in tannin and served by the jug in dedicated taverns, and where the fruit comes from meadow orchards rather than from planted cider orchards.
FrankfurtMosel
Moselle
The German Moselle around Trier, where Viez — dry apple wine drunk from a distinctive earthenware jug — occupies the everyday place that Riesling occupies in the valley’s economy.
Region
Saarland
The small German state where Viez is most strongly identified as a regional drink, made from meadow orchard fruit and drunk as an everyday alternative to beer in a formerly industrial landscape.
Styles made here
Categories whose definition or characteristic practice belongs to this country.
Apfelwein
The dry, sharp, still apple wine of Hesse, fermented out from culinary and local fruit and served in ridged glasses from a stoneware jug.
Dry cider
Cider fermented out or finished so that little fermentable sugar remains, leaving acid, tannin and alcohol to carry the palate.
Most
The farmhouse fermented fruit drink of Austria and southern Germany, made from apples, pears or both, and belonging to a meadow-orchard landscape as much as to a recipe.
Still cider
Cider with no perceptible dissolved carbon dioxide, presented as a fermented fruit drink whose texture rests on body, acid and tannin alone.
Apple wine
A fermented apple drink made to wine strength, usually by raising the starting gravity, and presented and taxed as a wine rather than as a cider.
Pétillant
Pétillant cider
Lightly carbonated cider in which the gas is felt as a prickle rather than a stream of bubbles, the level most traditional bottle fermentation reaches on its own.
Unfiltered cider
Cider packaged without filtration, retaining suspended yeast and fine solids and the body and aroma that come with them.
Viez
The cider of the Moselle and Saarland, dry and still in the local manner, drunk from a distinctive lidded pot and named from a word for the second pressing.
Protected designations and national definitions
Names the law reserves, and the instruments that reserve them. Each page carries the date the record was taken.
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.
- Filtered or unfiltered cider — what is the difference
- What is apfelwein — Apfelwein is the dry, still, tart apple cider of Hessen in Germany, known locally as Ebbelwoi and served from a stoneware jug into a ridged glass. Despite the name it is a cider, not a wine in any technical sense.
- What is the difference between cider and apple wine
- Why does my dry cider still taste sweet — Alcohol, glycerol and ripe fruit aroma all read as sweetness even when no sugar remains. High alcohol in particular is perceived as sweet before it is perceived as strong.
- Is cider meant to be still or sparkling
- What is most the drink — In Austria, southern Germany and Switzerland *Most* is fermented apple or pear juice — the local cider. Confusingly, *Süßmost* is the unfermented juice, so the word alone does not tell you whether there is alcohol in the glass.
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.
Hochschule Geisenheim University — beverage technology
Hochschule Geisenheim · university · retrieved 2026-08-24
German beverage-technology research covering apple wine and fruit juice processing, including the enzymology of clarification.
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.
European Cider and Fruit Wine Association (AICV)
AICV · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
European Union · legislation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Verordnung über alkoholhaltige Getränke (Alkoholhaltige Getränke-Verordnung, AGeV)
Federal Republic of Germany, of 29 January 1998, in the version of 30 June 2003 (BGBl. I S. 1255), last amended 11 October 2021 (BGBl. I S. 4683) · legislation · passage verified 2026-08-25
The binding German instrument for apple wine, and the striking thing about it is how little it says. It defines three umbrella categories by carbonation and by starting material, forbids the use of grape products, and governs how the word *Wein* may be compounded. It sets no minimum alcohol, no acidity, no extract and no permitted-additions list for Apfelwein. Every number a German apple wine is expected to meet sits in the Leitsätze instead, which are not law. German wine law does not reach apple wine at all: the Weingesetz applies to wine and other products of viticulture. Read as PDF on 2026-08-25.
Deutsche Lebensmittelbuch-Kommission, BAnz AT 02.03.2026 B5, GMBl 9/2026 S. 184–189; published by the Bundesministerium für Landwirtschaft, Ernährung und Heimat · standards body · passage verified 2026-08-25
Where the German numbers actually are. The Leitsätze are qualified expert opinion rather than legislation — courts use them as evidence of customary trade practice — but they are the only German statement of what an Apfelwein must contain, and they are followed. Retrieved as PDF and read on 2026-08-25, five months after this recast took effect. Two changes in the recast matter to this site. It creates *Apfel Cider* and *Birnen Cider* as a named category for the first time, at 1.2 to 8.5 % vol with up to 50 per cent water, concentrate and added aroma permitted — a category defined so as to admit almost everything the Apfelwein entry excludes. And it splits the word Speierling from the fruit: the flavour indication carries on meaning a tannic, acid-led apple wine, and only the phrase *mit Speierling-Früchten* now says that any service-tree fruit was used.
DPMAregister — the German register of geographical indications
Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt · regulator · passage verified 2026-08-25
The German patent and trade mark office holds the national file for every German geographical indication, including the full product specification — which the EU register does not always publish. File 305 99 009.8 is Hessischer Apfelwein, registered version in Markenblatt Heft 51 of 19 December 2014. Reading it turned four CiderHQ requirement records from “the specification states limits” into the limits themselves.
Country and region records describe practice and tradition. How CiderHQ handles evidence.