Protected geographical indication (PGI) · Cider
Gloucestershire Cider PGI
The protected geographical indication for cider from Gloucestershire, registered under the EU scheme alongside the county’s perry name and now held on the UK register as well.
This record was taken as at 2026-08-23 and describes an instrument administered in England.
- Kind
- Protected geographical indication (PGI)
- Product
- Cider
- Country
- England
- Regions covered
- Gloucestershire
- Register
- EU register of geographical indications, file PGI-GB-0290, verified against the register on 2026-08-25. The EU register holds one combined file per county covering both cider and perry — PGI-GB-0290 — while the United Kingdom register lists the two drinks separately. Both descriptions are accurate about their own register.
- Record taken as at
- 2026-08-23
- Registered on
- 1996-06-21
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: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs · 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 geographical area is the county of Gloucestershire. The specification names it and nothing narrower; there is no delimited district inside the county.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The specification fixes the finished drink by composition, not by juice content. Actual alcoholic strength must be 4.0–8.5% ABV; specific gravity at 20 °C between 0.996 and 1.022; sugar-free dry extract above 13 g/L; total acidity as malic acid between 40 and 60 mEq/L; and volatile acidity as acetic acid below 1.4 g/L.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
CiderHQ previously described this specification as stating a minimum juice content. Reading it showed that it does not: there is no juice-content figure anywhere in the document. What it controls is the composition of the finished cider, which is a different kind of rule and a weaker guarantee of what went in.
Total sulphur dioxide must be below 200 mg/L and free sulphur dioxide must sit between 40 and 60 mg/L — unusually, a floor as well as a ceiling.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
A minimum free SO2 is a preservation requirement rather than a limit on additives, and it puts this specification out of reach of a maker who works without sulphite at all.
The specification caps four metals and metalloids in the finished drink: iron below 7 mg/kg, copper below 2 mg/kg, arsenic below 0.2 mg/kg and lead below 0.2 mg/kg.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
These are contamination limits inherited from mid-century practice, when iron and copper picked up from equipment were a live cause of hazes and off-flavours in cider.
The drink is fermented from the juice of locally grown cider apples, with or without the addition of up to 25% perry pear juice.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
A quarter of the blend may be the other fruit, so a cider under this name can legitimately contain perry pear juice and a perry can contain cider apple juice.
Chaptalisation is permitted, to bring potential alcohol to about 9.5% ABV before final blending; the method also allows the juice to be concentrated for storage and later reconstituted, and the finished drink to be diluted and sweetened before packaging.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
This is the clause that most separates the Three Counties names from Traditional Welsh Cider and Perry, which forbid added sugar, concentrate and dilution outright. Two UK protected names, two very different promises.
The specification names example cider apples rather than closing a list — it cites varieties "such as" a handful of well-known ones, followed by "etc" — and records that over 99% of the fruit used comes from growers inside the area.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
An open variety list is a real difference from the French appellations, which enumerate permitted fruit exhaustively. Under this name the grower, not the specification, decides what is planted.
Fermentation runs in vats at ambient temperature and, including malolactic fermentation, takes up to about three months; the drink is then racked and matured for up to six months before filtering, centrifuging or fining. Cask conditioning with added sugar and yeast is permitted, producing a pétillant or sparkling drink served from the cask.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The name was registered under the EU protected food name scheme on 21 June 1996 and entered on the United Kingdom register at 23:00 on 31 December 2020, when the transition period ended. It appears on both registers, which is the intended result of the withdrawal arrangements rather than a duplication.
Primary authority United Kingdom; European Union · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, European Commission
About Gloucestershire Cider PGI
Gloucestershire’s cider country runs from the Severn vale up into the Forest of Dean and along the edge of the Cotswolds, and it has a farm-scale character that distinguishes it from the industrial concentration of Herefordshire. The county gave the trade several of its most-used bittersweets and a considerable body of orchard record, and its protected name dates from the same mid-1990s round of EU registrations as its neighbours’.
As with the other English county registrations, the specification defines the area and states conditions of production rather than prescribing fruit or method. That permissiveness is often criticised, and the criticism is fair as far as it goes; but it also reflects a genuine difficulty, which is that a specification narrow enough to capture the most careful farmhouse practice would exclude most of the cider the county actually makes.
Registration protects a name. It is not an assessment of quality, it involves no tasting panel, and it neither certifies the cider inside a given bottle nor casts any doubt on cider made outside the county. A Somerset or Kentish maker loses nothing by it.
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.
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 england — Overwhelmingly in the West Country — Somerset, Herefordshire, Devon, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire — with smaller traditions in Kent, Sussex, East Anglia and the north.
- Where are perry pears grown
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 England — 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.
UK protected geographical food and drink names register
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs · government · passage verified 2026-08-25
The register itself is an index; the substance is in the product specification attached to each entry as a PDF. Eight cider and perry specifications were downloaded and read on 2026-08-24 — the six Three Counties names and the two Welsh ones. Reading them settled a question CiderHQ had previously described in the abstract and got wrong: the Three Counties specifications state a composition table, not a minimum juice content. The Traditional Welsh Perry specification was re-read on 2026-08-25 for the comparison with Austrian fruit-wine law, and its prohibition list transcribed in full: the two instruments turn out to regulate opposite things, one composition and one technique.
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.