Protected geographical indication (PGI) · Cider
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.
Written on the label as Cidre de Normandie.
This record was taken as at 2026-08-23 and describes an instrument administered in France.
- Kind
- Protected geographical indication (PGI)
- Product
- Cider
- Country
- France
- Regions covered
- Normandy, Pays d’Auge, Cotentin
- Register
- EU register of geographical indications, file PGI-FR-0089, verified against the register on 2026-08-25.
- Record taken as at
- 2026-08-23
- Registered on
- 2000-02-10
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: European Commission · INAO
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 specification in force is the cahier des charges on which the European Commission based its decision of 4 October 2019, published as Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1703 in the Official Journal on 11 October 2019 and carried in the Bulletin officiel du Ministère de l’agriculture 2019-42. It annuls and replaces the version homologated by arrêté of 20 December 2016.
Primary authority France (indication géographique protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO, European Commission
The cider is fermented from the must of fresh cider fruit — cider apples or perry pears — defined by measurement as fruit whose juice carries at least 0.6 grams per litre of total tannic acids, native or oxidised. The specification records that perry pears were traditionally introduced to acidify the juice.
Primary authority France (indication géographique protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
A cidre de Normandie may lawfully contain pear juice. That is not a loophole, it is written into the definition of the fruit, and it is a real difference from the Breton indication, which admits apples only. Anyone treating “cider is from apples, perry is from pears” as a rule of law should read this clause first.
Concentrated must may make up to 40% of the total must volume, expressed as reconstituted must, and the ceiling includes any concentrate used to sweeten the finished cider. Rémiage — adding cold potable water to the pressed marc to recover residual sugar — is permitted.
Primary authority France (indication géographique protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Set beside the Pays d’Auge and Cotentin specifications, which govern the same fruit a few miles away and forbid both, this is the sharpest illustration on the site of what the letters on a French label actually mean.
Pre-fermentation clarification happens spontaneously or by permitted customary treatments; the pulp may be given a period of cuvage before pressing. Pure juice, rémiage juice and reconstituted must may ferment separately or blended, at ambient temperature or cold. Decantation, centrifugation, filtration and fining are permitted. Conditioning is carried out in closed tank or in bottle using the natural flora or selected yeasts, and gasification is also permitted. Caramel is the only colourant allowed.
Primary authority France (indication géographique protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The cider must reach a minimum total alcoholic strength of 5.0% vol and a minimum acquired strength of 1.5% vol, with volatile acidity no greater than 1 gram per litre expressed as sulphuric acid. Volumes destined for industrial use or for compound products may be sold without meeting any effervescence condition.
Primary authority France (indication géographique protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The specification describes the orchard base it draws on rather than prescribing it: more than a third of the area in bitter and bittersweet varieties, more than a third in sweet varieties, and the remainder in acidulée and aigre fruit.
Primary authority France (indication géographique protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Worth reading as a description and not a rule — the indication does not audit an individual orchard against these proportions. It is also a different balance from the Breton indication, which reports just under half its area in bitter and bittersweet fruit and a third in acidulée and aigre.
Harvesting the fruit and making the cider must take place inside the geographical area. Conditioning is the one operation that may be carried out elsewhere.
Primary authority France (indication géographique protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The specification describes the cider as clear or cloudy with a fine mousse, powerful and varied in aroma with a fruity dominance — apple, citrus, peach, apricot — and coloured from light yellow to deep orange, the deeper colours coming from blends rich in polyphenols that oxidise during cuvage of the pulp.
Primary authority France (indication géographique protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
About Cidre de Normandie / Cidre normand
Cidre de Normandie is the umbrella indication for Norman cider. It is a protected geographical indication rather than a designation of origin, which is a real legal distinction and not a matter of prestige: a PGI ties a name to an area through named stages of production, while a PDO or French AOP requires the whole character of the product to derive from the place. The area is generous — the Norman departments and a thin margin beyond them — and inside it sit the far tighter appellations of the Pays d’Auge and the Cotentin.
What the indication actually secures is the honesty of the name. A cider labelled Cidre de Normandie has been made under a specification lodged on the EU register, from cider fruit, by fermenting must rather than by rehydrating concentrate, and with its bubble raised by fermentation rather than injected. Those are not small commitments in a market where the plain word cidre under French national law is a looser thing again, and where the equivalent English-language category permits water and concentrate outright.
It is worth being plain about the limits. The indication does not rank Norman cider above cider made anywhere else, and it makes no promise about how any individual bottle tastes: within one specification there is room for a bone-dry farmhouse bottling and a sweet, lightly filtered commercial one, and both are entitled to the name. Nor does it prevent a maker in Somerset, Asturias or Vermont from making cider of any quality they can reach. It stops a producer outside the area from borrowing the word Normandy, and that is the whole of its function.
Described in full
- Shape
- A table of seven rows and six columns. Rows are the appellations, columns are the clauses. Every cell carries a word or a number rather than a tick, so nothing is carried by a mark whose meaning has to be looked up.
- Pays d’Auge
- Must density 1.050; pectic settling compulsory; yeast may be added; bottle conditioning 6 weeks; minimum pressure 1.5 bar; acquired alcohol 3.5 per cent.
- Cornouaille
- Must sugar 108 grams per litre; défécation — keeving — compulsory and the only clarification allowed; yeast may be added; conditioning 6 weeks; 1.5 bar; 3.5 per cent.
- Cidre Cotentin
- Clarification compulsory; no yeast may be added to the first fermentation; conditioning 8 weeks, the longest of the seven; 1.0 bar, the lowest of the seven; 3.5 per cent. Also the only one with a second, drier product defined inside its own specification, the extra-brut.
- Cidre du Perche
- Must density 1.045; clarification compulsory; no yeast in the first fermentation; 8 weeks in tank before bottling; conditioning 6 weeks; 1.5 bar; 3.5 per cent.
- Domfront (perry)
- Must density 1.047; slow fermentation with nothing added to promote or retard it; conditioning 6 weeks; 1.4 bar; acquired alcohol 3.0 per cent, the lowest of the seven.
- Cidre de Bretagne IGP and Cidre de Normandie IGP
- Both are indications rather than appellations of origin and both sit apart from the five above: concentrate to 40 per cent of must volume, added water permitted, injected gas permitted, caramel permitted as a colourant, and a minimum acquired alcohol of 1.5 per cent against a total of 5.0.
- The reading
- The five appellations of origin forbid what the two indications permit. That is the whole of the difference between the two kinds of French label, and it is larger than the difference between any two of the appellations.
Styles this designation covers
Categories whose definition or characteristic practice this specification governs.
Where it applies
The areas named by the specification, each described in its own terms.
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.
Pays d’Auge
The Norman heartland of appellation cider and of pot-still Calvados: a small area of heavy clay, hedged pasture and dairy farms whose cider is defined by regulation as much as by tradition.
Cotentin
The exposed granite peninsula of western Normandy, where hedged bocage shelters orchards from a hard maritime wind and the cider is drier, more bitter and more structured than the Norman norm.
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 normandy cider
- Where is cider made in france — Principally in Normandy and Brittany, with smaller traditions in the Perche, Maine, Savoie and the French Basque Country. The Pays d’Auge and the Domfrontais both carry protected appellations.
- What is cotentin cider — Cider from the exposed granite peninsula of western Normandy, where hedged bocage shelters the orchards from Atlantic wind. It holds an appellation of origin whose specification is the strictest of the French five on yeast: none may be added to the first fermentation.
- What is the pays d auge — The Pays d’Auge is the heartland of Norman cider, a country of clay soils and standard orchards east of Caen. Its cider and its calvados both carry appellations of their own.
Where to go next
- All protected designations — Every reserved name on CiderHQ, grouped by country, with what each kind of instrument does.
- Cider and perry in France — How cider is legally defined and taxed in the country administering this name.
- How CiderHQ handles evidence — Why a requirement here states a structure rather than a figure.
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.
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.
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.