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National legal definition · Cider and perry

Cider and perry under the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code

The joint Australian and New Zealand food standard that defines cider and perry as fruit wines and governs what may be added to them and how they are labelled.

This record was taken as at 2026-08-23 and describes an instrument administered in Australia.

Kind
National legal definition
Product
Cider and perry
Country
Australia
Regions covered
Stated in the specification
Register
Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, administered by Food Standards Australia New Zealand
Record taken as at
2026-08-23
What this page is, and what it is not

CiderHQ records the structure of a specification: that it defines an area, that it restricts the fruit, that it sets a minimum strength or a sweetness band. Where a figure was not verified against the register itself, this page says a threshold exists and stops there rather than reproducing a number it cannot trace. Knowing that a limit is written down, and where it is written down, is worth more than a plausible figure.

Designation rules change. Specifications are amended, and the amendments do not announce themselves. Anyone relying on this commercially — labelling a product, drafting a claim, buying under the name — must read the current specification on the register itself rather than any summary of it, including this one.

Read the register: Food Standards Australia New Zealand · Food Standards Australia New Zealand · FAO / WHO

What the specification requires

Each requirement is recorded as a claim with its jurisdiction, its as-of date and the source it rests on. Requirements that could not carry all three are not shown.

The Food Standards Code treats cider and perry within its fruit wine provisions, defining them as products of the complete or partial fermentation of apple or pear juice respectively.

Primary authority Australia and New Zealand · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Food Standards Australia New Zealand

The Code specifies what may lawfully be added to these products — including permitted additives and processing aids, and the circumstances in which water and sugar may be used — rather than setting a minimum juice content of the United Kingdom type. The permitted additions are listed in the Code.

Primary authority Australia and New Zealand · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Food Standards Australia New Zealand

The absence of a juice-content floor is the single most important difference from British law, and it is why Australian debate about cider composition has centred on labelling rather than on a percentage.

The Code requires alcoholic strength to be declared on the label, requires the number of standard drinks to be stated, and applies the general food labelling rules on allergens — including the declaration of sulphites above the specified level — to cider and perry.

Primary authority Australia and New Zealand · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Food Standards Australia New Zealand

The Code is a compositional and labelling standard applying jointly in Australia and New Zealand. It carries no geographical protection for cider or perry, and neither country operates a protected designation scheme for them comparable to the European registers.

Primary authority Australia and New Zealand · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Food Standards Australia New Zealand

About Cider and perry under the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code

Australia and New Zealand share a food standards system, and cider and perry are handled inside it as fruit wines rather than as a category of their own. The Code says what the products are, what may be put in them and what must appear on the label; it does not attempt to define a traditional method or to reserve a regional name.

The consequential gap, from a drinker’s point of view, is the absence of a minimum juice requirement. British law at least sets a floor, however low; the Code approaches the question through permitted additions and truthful labelling instead. Australian cider debate has accordingly focused on whether a label makes clear what is in the bottle — particularly for products built substantially from imported concentrate — rather than on arguing about a percentage.

Both countries have real cider regions, in Tasmania, the Adelaide Hills, Victoria and around Nelson, with orchards and makers whose work is specific to those places. None of that specificity has legal protection. A cider named for a district there relies on the producer’s own honesty and on general consumer-protection law, not on a register, and that is a straightforward difference from Europe rather than a deficiency in the drink.

Where to go next

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.