Appellation d’origine protégée (AOP) · Cider
Cornouaille
Brittany’s cider appellation of origin, covering a defined area of southern Finistère and restricted to traditional Breton cider varieties fermented as pure juice.
This record was taken as at 2026-08-23 and describes an instrument administered in France.
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 on which the European Commission based its decision of 11 February 2021, published as Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/244 in the Official Journal on 18 February 2021 and carried in the Ministry of Agriculture’s Bulletin officiel 2021-10. It annuls and replaces the version homologated by arrêté of 22 March 2019.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO, European Commission
Two consolidated texts for this appellation circulate, and one of them carries blanks where the homologating decree should be named. CiderHQ read the version the Commission approved.
The geographical area covers forty communes in Finistère, thirty-three in full and seven in part, on the 2017 official geographic code. Both the apples and the cider — including disgorging, where it is done — must be produced inside it, and each orchard must be individually identified by INAO, with applications made before 1 April of the harvest year.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Orchard-by-orchard identification is what separates this from a geographical indication. It is not enough to farm inside the boundary; the specific trees have to be on a list.
Fifty-four varieties are named and the list is closed: forty-one phenolic — bitter and bittersweet — eight acidulée and five douce. Local cider apple varieties not on the list are permitted up to 20% of the orchard area and are counted as phenolic.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The Breton list is almost entirely distinct from the Norman one. Names such as C’Huero Ruz, Prat Yod, Seac’h Biniou and Trojenn Hir are Breton-language cultivars that exist nowhere else in the French appellation system, and the specification’s own account of the region attributes the arrival of phenolic varieties to coastal traffic from Spain.
Phenolic varieties must make up at least 70% of the orchard area and acidulée varieties no more than 15%. Planting density is capped at 250 trees per hectare with a minimum 6 metres between trees for high-stem orchards, and at 750 per hectare for bush orchards. Irrigation is prohibited once the trees come into production.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Maximum average orchard yield is 25 tonnes of apples or 187.5 hectolitres of must per hectare for high-stem orchards and 30 tonnes or 225 hectolitres for bush orchards, measured across the last two harvests. Trees count towards production only from the seventh year after planting for high stems and the third for bush trees.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The high-stem cap is higher here than in the Norman appellations, which allow 20 tonnes. The Breton specification is not a copy of the Norman one with the names changed.
Apples are milled or grated to a pulp and pressed; no water may be added, and pressing by working the pulp through a screw auger is prohibited. The musts must carry a minimum natural sugar content of 108 grams per litre.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Cornouaille states its minimum must richness as grams of sugar where Pays d’Auge, Perche and Domfront state theirs as a density. The two are not interchangeable without a conversion the specifications do not supply.
Clarification of the musts is compulsory, and may be obtained only by défécation — keeving — either naturally or assisted by permitted defecating salts and specific enzymes. Fermentation of the clarified must proceeds slowly, with no substance added to promote or retard yeast development.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
This is the strongest keeving requirement in French cider law. Pays d’Auge requires débourbage pectique, pectic settling; Cornouaille names défécation itself and permits nothing else. A cider carrying this name has been keeved.
Pasteurisation, gasification, and any operation intended to alter the natural sugar content or the colour of the musts or ciders are prohibited at every stage. Clarification of the ciders during and after fermentation is permitted only by filtration or centrifugation.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Each cuvée must draw at least 70% of its apples from phenolic varieties, no more than 15% from acidulée varieties, less than 20% from unlisted local varieties, and no more than 60% from any single variety. All the fruit must come from one harvest.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The single-variety cap is unique among the French cider appellations. It rules out a Cornouaille that is essentially one apple, which the Pays d’Auge rules — three varieties minimum, no ceiling on any one of them — do not.
Bottling takes place at least six weeks after pressing and no later than 31 October of the year following the harvest. The sparkle must come solely from fermenting part of the residual sugar in the bottle, optionally after adding active dried yeast, and conditioning must run for at least six weeks before the cider may move between operators or reach a consumer.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
After the minimum conditioning period the deposit may be removed by disgorging, by isobarometric bottle-to-bottle filtration, or by transfer into a unifying vessel followed by isobarometric filtration.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Naming the permitted methods matters because all three keep the cider under pressure. There is no route in this specification by which a Cornouaille loses its condition and has it put back.
After conditioning the cider must show an acquired alcoholic strength above 3.5% vol, a total alcoholic strength above 6% vol, a sugar content of at least 20 grams per litre, and a pressure of at least 1.5 bar at 20 °C or 3 grams of carbon dioxide per litre.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The gap between acquired and total strength requires unfermented sugar to still be present, which is how the appellation obtains sweetness while forbidding any addition of it. The same construction appears in the Pays d’Auge specification with the same figures.
The specification describes the cider as golden to orange, particularly rich in tannins, with a lively but subtle effervescence, a characteristic tannic savour and a good balance between sugar and bitterness.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
About Cornouaille
Cornouaille is the historic country of south-west Finistère, and its appellation is the only French cider designation of origin outside Normandy. The name on the label is the region alone — not Cidre de Cornouaille — which is a small formality that trips up readers expecting the French cider appellations to follow one naming pattern.
The ciders are built on Breton bittersweet and sweet fruit, and they read differently from Norman ones: firmer, drier in impression even when they carry sugar, with the bitterness carried further forward. The specification’s restriction of fruit to traditional local varieties is doing most of that work, because it excludes the high-yielding dessert and culinary apples that would soften the profile. Fermentation is of pure juice, and any bubble is fermentative.
The appellation exists because a name was being borrowed. Protecting it prevents cider made elsewhere from being sold as Cornouaille; it does not certify that any particular bottle is well made, and it makes no comparative claim against the ciders of Normandy, Asturias or the English west. A Breton producer working just outside the delimited communes, with the same varieties and the same method, is making Breton cider — with a PGI available to them — and not Cornouaille.
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.
Where it applies
The areas named by the specification, each described in its own terms.
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.
- 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 breton cider
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.