Appellation d’origine protégée (AOP) · Cider
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.
Written on the label as Cidre Cotentin.
This record was taken as at 2026-08-23 and describes an instrument administered in France.
- Kind
- Appellation d’origine protégée (AOP)
- Product
- Cider
- Country
- France
- Register
- EU register of geographical indications, file PDO-FR-02206, verified against the register on 2026-08-25.
- Record taken as at
- 2026-08-23
- Registered on
- 2016-11-21
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: INAO · European Commission
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 homologated by arrêté of 14 October 2016, published in the Journal officiel on 22 October 2016 and in the Bulletin officiel du Ministère de l’agriculture 44-2016.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Every operation from growing the apples to conditioning the cider in bottle must take place inside the delimited area on the Cotentin peninsula in the Manche, and the orchards supplying the fruit must be individually identified.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Phenolic varieties must occupy at least 70% of the orchard area. The specification then divides the permitted fruit in two: fifteen principal varieties — Belle fille de la Manche, Binet Rouge, Bois Jingant, Cartigny, Closette, Feuillard, Gros amer, Marin Onfroy, Peau de Chien, Petit amer, Rouge de Cantepie, Sans Pareille, Tapin, Tête de Brebis and Taureau — which must make up at least 60% of the orchard area, and thirteen accessory varieties which may make up no more than 40%. Unlisted varieties are permitted only on high stems and only to 20% of the orchard area.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Every one of the fifteen principal varieties is bitter or bittersweet. That is the appellation’s argument in a sentence: it does not merely require tannic fruit as a proportion, it names which tannic fruit, and they are largely Cotentin apples that appear on no other French appellation list. Argile rouge is on the accessory list with a footnote recording that replanting it has been temporarily prohibited since an arrêté of 12 August 1994 because of its susceptibility to fireblight.
High-stem orchards are limited to 280 trees per hectare with at least 5 metres between trees, and bush orchards to 800 per hectare. Complete grassing is compulsory apart from a 30-centimetre radius around each trunk, from the seventh year after planting for high stems and the third for bush trees. Irrigation is prohibited once trees come into production. At least 30% of the fruit worked at each production site, by orchard area, must come from high-stem orchards.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Maximum average orchard yield is 20 tonnes of apples or 150 hectolitres of must per hectare for high-stem orchards and 30 tonnes or 225 hectolitres for bush orchards. Where high-stem trees are scattered rather than planted in rows, each is counted at a fixed projected area of 142 square metres.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Clarification of the musts is compulsory, obtained naturally or assisted by flotation, defecating salts or specific enzymes. Any addition or concentration intended to raise the natural sugar content of the fruit is prohibited throughout, as are pasteurisation, added water and colourings.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The alcoholic fermentation that precedes bottling must take place without any addition of exogenous active dried yeast. Yeast may be added only for the bottle conditioning that follows.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
This is the clause that most sharply distinguishes Cotentin from the other French cider appellations. Pays d’Auge and Cornouaille require only that nothing be added to promote or retard the ferment; Cotentin and Perche prohibit pitching outright, so the first fermentation is spontaneous as a matter of law rather than of custom.
At least six weeks must pass between pressing and bottling. Each cuvée must be at least 60% principal varieties and drawn from a single harvest. The sparkle must come exclusively from fermenting part of the residual sugar in the bottle, and that conditioning must run for at least eight weeks. Bottling must be completed by 30 September of the year following the harvest, and pasteurisation of the cider is prohibited.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Eight weeks is the longest bottle-conditioning minimum of any French cider appellation; Pays d’Auge, Cornouaille and Perche all require six.
The cider must show an acquired alcoholic strength above 3.5% vol, a total strength above 5.5% vol, a sugar content above 18 and no more than 35 grams per litre, a density above 1.009 and no more than 1.0175 at 20 °C, and a pressure of at least 1 bar at 20 °C or 2 grams of carbon dioxide per litre.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
A minimum pressure of 1 bar is the lowest in the French cider appellations, where the others require 1.4 or 1.5. A Cotentin is allowed to be perceptibly gentler in the glass and still carry its name.
A cider may carry the additional mention “extra-brut” only if it shows an acquired alcoholic strength above 5% vol, a total strength above 5.5% vol, a sugar content no greater than 18 grams per litre, and a density no greater than 1.009 at 20 °C.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Cotentin is the only French cider appellation that defines a second, drier product inside its own specification. The two profiles are mutually exclusive: the standard product requires more than 18 g/L of sugar and the extra-brut requires no more than 18.
The specification describes the cider as effervescent, unpasteurised and not gasified, straw yellow to orange-yellow, with a fine bead and a balance in which bitter flavours predominate.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
About Cidre du Cotentin
The Cotentin is the peninsula that runs north from the Norman coast towards the Channel Islands, exposed, maritime and agriculturally distinct from the sheltered Pays d’Auge to the east. Its cider appellation is the newest of the Norman group and the narrowest in what it permits: rather than defining families of fruit and proportions between them, it works from a short list of local varieties, weighted towards bitter types.
That narrowness is the point. A large indication such as Cidre de Normandie can accommodate very different ciders because its variety list is long; the Cotentin specification produces a recognisable house style because the fruit it allows is nearly the same in every orchard. The specification reaches back into the orchard as well, which is what separates a designation of origin from a geographical indication — it is not enough that the cider was made here, the trees must be managed in the way the appellation describes.
None of this is a claim about quality, and the appellation makes none. It is a claim about identity: that a cider carrying the name comes from this peninsula, from these varieties, made this way. Producers on the Cotentin who work outside the specification — with different fruit, or with a technique the cahier des charges does not allow — sell cider that may be excellent and simply is not called Cidre Cotentin.
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.
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.
Cidre de Normandie
Protected Normandy cider made from the region’s bitter and bittersweet fruit, characteristically low in alcohol, sweet-edged and lightly sparkling.
Where it applies
The areas named by the specification, each described in its own terms.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.