Appellation d’origine protégée (AOP) · Perry
Poiré Domfront
France’s appellation of origin for perry, covering the Domfrontais in southern Normandy and requiring a substantial proportion of the local Plant de Blanc pear from tall-stem trees.
This record was taken as at 2026-08-23 and describes an instrument administered in France.
- Kind
- Appellation d’origine protégée (AOP)
- Product
- Perry
- Country
- France
- Regions covered
- Domfrontais, Normandy
- Register
- EU register of geographical indications, file PDO-FR-0276, verified against the register on 2026-08-25.
- Record taken as at
- 2026-08-23
- Registered on
- 2003-10-30
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 7 October 2025, published in the Journal officiel on 11 October 2025 and in the Bulletin officiel du Ministère de l’agriculture 42-2025. The geographical area rests on decisions of the INAO national committee of 11–12 December 2001 and 11 June 2025, on the 2025 official geographic code.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO, European Commission
This appellation was revised in October 2025, which is recent enough that most published accounts of it describe the previous text. Everything recorded here comes from the operative version.
The area spans three departments: five whole communes and part of one in the Manche, five whole and part of one in the Mayenne, and fourteen whole and four in part in the Orne. Growing the pears, making the perry and bottling it must all happen inside it, and each orchard must be individually identified by INAO on application made before 1 November of the year preceding the harvest.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Plant de Blanc is the principal variety and forty complementary varieties are listed. The specification sets two separate minima: Plant de Blanc must be at least 20% of the trees in the orchard, and at least 40% of the blend at bottling. No single complementary variety may exceed 25% of the blend, and varieties outside the list may not exceed 10% of it, or 20% of the trees in the orchard.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The two figures are routinely conflated into one, and they do different work. Twenty per cent of the trees is a long-run commitment to keeping a particular pear in the landscape; forty per cent of the blend is a statement about what the perry in the glass has to taste of. A grower can satisfy the first and still fail the second in a year when that variety cropped badly.
The pear trees must be grown on high stems: no more than 150 trees per hectare, with at least 6 metres between them. Isolated trees at densities below 40 per hectare are counted at a fixed projected area of 208 square metres each. The orchard must be entirely grassed from the time the trees come into production, and irrigation is prohibited from that point.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
A hundred and fifty trees per hectare is the lowest density any French cider or perry appellation permits — the Norman cider appellations allow 280 on high stems and up to 800 or 1000 on bush rootstocks. The specification’s own account of the region describes the pré-verger, an orchard of around fifty pear trees per hectare standing over permanent grazed pasture, and this clause is what keeps that system in existence.
Pears must be gathered in several successive pickings, variety by variety, to obtain fruit at proper ripeness, and mechanical shaking of the trees is prohibited. Fruit must be stored either in containers that let any liquid drain away completely or under cover from rain, and Plant de Blanc must be stored separately from the complementary varieties.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Banning mechanical shaking is a labour requirement disguised as a quality clause. Perry pears ripen unevenly and go from unpressable to rotten quickly, so several passes through a high-stem orchard by hand is expensive, and the appellation has decided that the alternative changes the fruit.
Maximum average yield over two years is 625 kilograms of pears or 4.4 hectolitres of must per tree, falling to 300 kilograms or 2.1 hectolitres per tree for Plant de Blanc. Young trees count towards production only from the seventh campaign after planting.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
A yield cap stated per tree rather than per hectare is unusual, and it follows from the orchard system: in a pré-verger with scattered standards, hectares are a poor unit. The tighter cap on Plant de Blanc restrains the variety the appellation most depends on.
The pears are grated to a pulp, the pulp undergoes a maceration phase — cuvage — and is then pressed. The musts must reach a minimum density of 1.047 at 20 °C.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
The must ferments slowly with no substance added to promote or retard yeast development. Pasteurisation, added water, added flavourings, added colourings and any operation intended to alter the natural sugar content of the musts or the perries are prohibited at every stage.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Bottling takes place at least six weeks after pressing and the bottling period ends on 30 September of the year following the harvest. The sparkle must come exclusively from fermenting part of the residual sugar in the bottle, optionally after adding active dried yeast; introducing exogenous gas is prohibited at every point of production and bottling. Conditioning must run for at least six weeks before the perry may be sold.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO, European Commission
The perry must show an acquired alcoholic strength of at least 3% vol, a total alcoholic strength of at least 5.5% vol, and a pressure of at least 1.4 bar at 20 °C.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
Three per cent is the lowest alcohol floor in the French appellation system, half a point below the ciders. It is not a concession: perry pear juice carries sorbitol that yeast cannot ferment, so a Domfront can be dry by measurement, low in alcohol and still sweet on the palate — and the specification’s own sensory description names that unfermented sweetness explicitly.
The specification describes the perry as pale to intense golden yellow, with a harmonious effervescence of fine bubbles and a wide aromatic palette dominated by fruity and floral notes, its flavours balanced between acidity and the sweetness of the unfermented sugars, often with a touch of astringency.
Primary authority France (appellation d’origine protégée) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · INAO
About Poiré Domfront
Perry is regulated almost nowhere, which makes Poiré Domfront unusual: a full appellation of origin for a drink that in most countries has no legal identity beyond a labelling term. The Domfrontais is a granite country in southern Normandy where pears were planted among the apples because the soils suited them, and the appellation formalises what that produced — a low-alcohol, naturally sparkling perry with the sorbitol sweetness and the fine bitterness that pear fruit gives and apple does not.
The two clauses that matter most are the variety minimum and the orchard requirement. Plant de Blanc must make up a substantial share of the blend, so the perry cannot be assembled from whatever pears are available; and the fruit must come from tall-stem trees, which is an expensive commitment. A high-stemmed perry pear may take twenty years or more to crop properly and can then stand for a century, so the specification is in effect protecting an orchard landscape as much as a drink.
The appellation is not a quality mark and does not act as one. It does not rank Domfront perry against the perries of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire or Monmouthshire, several of which are made from equally old trees and with comparable care; it says only that a perry sold under this name comes from this district, from these pears, made this way. Nor does it protect the orchards themselves — that depends on whether enough perry is sold to make keeping the trees worthwhile.
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.
Poiré Domfront
The controlled appellation perry of the Domfrontais in southern Normandy, made predominantly from the Plant de Blanc pear on high-standard trees and finished sweet, low in alcohol and bottle-conditioned.
Poiré
French perry, made chiefly in southern Normandy and Maine from local perry pears, characteristically sweet, low in alcohol and firmly sparkling.
Where it applies
The areas named by the specification, each described in its own terms.
Domfrontais
The perry country of southern Normandy: an area of hedged bocage around Domfront where enormous standard pear trees supply a protected perry that must be built predominantly from a single pear variety.
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 domfrontais
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.