Appellation d’origine protégée (AOP) · Cider
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.
Written on the label as Cidre Pays d’Auge.
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
- Regions covered
- Pays d’Auge, Normandy
- Register
- EU register of geographical indications, file PDO-FR-0042, verified against the register on 2026-08-25.
- Record taken as at
- 2026-08-23
- Registered on
- 1999-02-20
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 17 January 2026, published in the Journal officiel on 21 January and in the Ministry of Agriculture’s Bulletin officiel 2026-04 of 22 January 2026.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
A revision adopted by the Comité national in September 2025 is under the procédure nationale d’opposition and is not yet law. The two texts differ on how carbonation is specified, so it matters which one a figure comes from. Everything recorded here is from the operative text.
The geographical area is delimited by a closed list of communes — 139 named in full, with others included only as to part — across Calvados and into Eure and Orne. Both the orchards and the production sites must lie inside it. The additional name “Cambremer” is reserved to a smaller zone within that area.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The cider is made from pure cider apple juice. Adding water, adding colourings, and any operation intended to alter the natural sugar content of the musts or the ciders are prohibited at every stage of production.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
This is the clause that separates an appellation cider from most of what the word covers elsewhere. There is no chaptalisation, no concentrate and no dilution — where the English county PGIs permit all three.
Permitted varieties are listed by category in an annex and the list is closed: thirty-seven phenolic varieties (bitter and bittersweet), three acidulée varieties — Rambault, René Martin and Petit Jaune — and eight douce varieties. Unlisted varieties are allowed only on high-stem trees and only up to 20% of the orchard area.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
A closed variety list is the sharpest structural difference between the French appellations and the English protected names, whose specifications name examples and then write “etc”.
Every cuvée must be at least 70% phenolic varieties, no more than 25% acidulée varieties, no more than 10% varieties outside the list, and must draw on at least three different varieties.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The appellation does not merely say which fruit may be used; it fixes the shape of the blend. A single-varietal cider cannot carry this name at all.
Maximum average orchard yield is capped at 20 tonnes of apples or 150 hectolitres of must per hectare for high-stem orchards, and 30 tonnes or 225 hectolitres per hectare for bush orchards, measured across the last two harvests.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
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
This is a conservation requirement inside a product specification. Standard high-stem orchards are the habitat that has disappeared fastest across European cider country, and the appellation ties its own name to keeping them in production.
The fruit is milled or grated to a pulp, which must then undergo cuvage — a maceration phase — before pressing. Pressing by working the pulp through a screw auger is prohibited. The musts must reach a natural density of at least 1.050 at 20 °C.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Cuvage is compulsory rather than traditional-if-you-like. It oxidises the pulp and extracts phenolic material from the skins, and it is a large part of why Pays d’Auge cider is darker and more bitter than a cider pressed straight after milling.
Clarification of the musts by débourbage pectique is compulsory. Clarification of the ciders during and after fermentation is permitted only by racking, filtration or centrifugation.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Pectic settling is the mechanism keeving depends on, made a condition of the name. The specification does not use the word défécation and does not require a full brown cap, so CiderHQ records what it says: the pectin-based clarification is mandatory, not the whole keeving procedure.
The sparkle must be obtained solely by fermenting part of the residual sugar in the bottle, optionally after adding active dried yeast. Gasification is prohibited and so is pasteurisation, at every stage.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
A cider carrying this name has never been filtered sterile and force-carbonated, and cannot have been. The condition in the bottle is the ferment finishing.
Bottling takes place no sooner than six weeks after pressing and no later than 30 September of the year following the harvest. Conditioning in bottle must run for at least six further weeks, and the cider may not be released to consumers before that period has elapsed.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
After conditioning the cider must show an acquired alcoholic strength of at least 3.5% vol, a total alcoholic strength of at least 6% vol, a sugar content of at least 20 g/L, and a pressure of at least 1.5 bar at 20 °C.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The gap between acquired and total strength is the specification’s way of requiring unfermented sugar: a cider at 3.5% actual and 6% total is carrying roughly two and a half percent of potential alcohol still as sugar. Sweetness here is arrested fermentation, not addition — which is what the ban on altering natural sugar content enforces.
The specification describes the cider as golden-yellow to orange, balanced and sweet on the attack, rather bitter in the finish, with discreet acidity — fruity with notes of fresh butter when young, developing leather notes with maturity.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
A formally specified sensory profile is something the English protected names do not attempt at all. It is worth reading as a statement of what the appellation is defending, rather than as a tasting note.
About Cidre du Pays d’Auge
The Pays d’Auge is the wooded, pastured country south of the Norman coast between Caen and Lisieux, and its cider appellation is the strictest in France. Where the surrounding Cidre de Normandie indication asks that the cider be linked to the region, the Pays d’Auge cahier des charges prescribes the orchard, the fruit, the blend balance and the method by which the juice is turned into cider. It is a designation of origin in the full sense: the argument it makes is that this cider could not be made the same way anywhere else.
The technical heart of it is what the specification does to the must before fermentation. Milled pulp must undergo cuvage, a maceration that oxidises it and draws phenolic material out of the skins; the must must then be clarified by débourbage pectique, pectic settling. Both are compulsory rather than customary. What ferments is a juice stripped of much of the nitrogen and solids a yeast population needs, and it stops short — which the appellation measures directly, requiring at least 3.5% acquired alcohol against at least 6% total. That gap is a requirement that roughly two and a half percent of potential alcohol still be present as sugar. Sweetness here is a ferment that did not finish, and that is how the appellation forbids added sugar and injected gas without forbidding either sweetness or bubble.
Two honest qualifications. First, the appellation regulates process and origin, not outcome: a producer can meet every clause of the specification and make a cider that a taster finds dull, and the label carries no guarantee to the contrary — though this is one of very few cider specifications anywhere that describes a sensory profile at all. Second, the specification requires pectic settling rather than keeving as such: the word défécation does not appear in it, and no brown cap is prescribed. What is mandatory is the pectin chemistry keeving depends on. Many Pays d’Auge producers do keeve in the full sense and the appellation is closely associated with the technique, but keeving is not Norman property either — it is practised in Brittany, in Herefordshire and Somerset, and by makers in North America who learned it from French literature. Cider made that way outside the Pays d’Auge is not lesser for being outside it; it simply cannot use the name.
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.
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.
Where it applies
The areas named by the specification, each described in its own terms.
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.
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 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.
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.