Protected geographical indication (PGI) · Cider
Traditional Welsh Cider PGI
The protected geographical indication for cider made in Wales by traditional whole-juice methods, secured decades after the English county names and written to a tighter specification.
Written on the label as Seidr Traddodiadol Cymreig.
This record was taken as at 2026-08-23 and describes an instrument administered in Wales.
- Kind
- Protected geographical indication (PGI)
- Product
- Cider
- Country
- Wales
- Regions covered
- Stated in the specification
- Register
- EU register of geographical indications, file PGI-GB-01251, verified against the register on 2026-08-25.
- Record taken as at
- 2026-08-23
- Registered on
- 2014-08-07
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 country of Wales. The cider must be made in Wales from cider apples grown in Wales, of indigenous and non-indigenous varieties alike; the specification restricts where the fruit is grown, not which varieties are planted.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The cider must be made from first-pressed juice, and be 100% cider apple juice.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The word Traditional in the protected name is doing legal work: it is the clause the whole-juice requirement attaches to, and it is what makes the name mean something a buyer can act on.
Alcoholic strength must be at least 3.00% and at most 8.49% ABV. The 8.49% ceiling is set one hundredth below the 8.5% at which UK duty law stops treating the drink as cider or perry.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
A specification that stops at 8.49% is not making a sensory judgement. It is staying inside the strength band at which UK duty law still calls the drink cider or perry.
The specification lists what may not be done, before, during or after fermentation: adding water to dilute or hydrate; adding apple or any other fruit concentrate; adding fermentable sugars, except as the liqueur de tirage for a secondary fermentation in bottle; adding non-fermentable sweeteners, natural or artificial; adding or removing colour; pasteurisation; membrane filtration; artificial carbonation; and fining agents such as isinglass or bentonite.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
This list, not the geography, is what the name is worth. It rules out concentrate, chaptalisation, dilution, sweeteners, pasteurisation and artificial carbonation — every one of which the Three Counties specifications permit.
Only three things may be added to the juice or the fermenting drink: cultured yeast such as Saccharomyces bayanus or S. cerevisiae; sulphite as sodium or potassium metabisulphite, to no more than 200 mg/L as SO2; and calcium chloride with pectin esterase enzyme, permitted solely for keeving.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Three forms are recognised, separated by carbonation and by how it arises. Still carries no carbonation above atmospheric pressure — below 1 bar (100 kPa) in a sealed container. Bottle conditioned is bottled before primary fermentation finishes and reaches 1.5–3.0 bar (150–300 kPa) at 0 °C. Bottle fermented is bottled after primary fermentation and restarted with sugar and yeast, reaching 4.0–6.0 bar (400–600 kPa) at 0 °C.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Bottle conditioning and bottle fermentation are used loosely and interchangeably in cider writing. Here they are two defined processes with different pressures, different sweetness and different clarity, and the specification separates them explicitly.
Keeving is permitted only in the bottle-conditioned form, and only by adding calcium chloride with pectin esterase enzyme to reduce the yeast and yeast-nutrient content. Keeved drinks tend to the lower end of the strength range, around 3.0–5.5% ABV, because keeving leaves fermentation incomplete.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
A protected-name specification naming keeving, and naming its two permitted inputs, is the strongest formal recognition the technique has in UK law.
The liqueur de tirage for a secondary fermentation in bottle is limited to fermentable sugar — glucose, fructose or sucrose — at 12 to 26 g/L, together with an active yeast culture equivalent to 100–200 mg of dry yeast per 750 mL, cider or perry from the same batch, and yeast nutrients or riddling aids where appropriate. No dosage is permitted after disgorging beyond topping up.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Bottles for the bottle-fermented form must be heavy-duty and punted, sealed with a 29 mm crown cap or a cork or plastic stopper under a wire cage, and able to withstand a sustained internal pressure of 6–12 bar at 25 °C.
Primary authority United Kingdom (protected geographical indication) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
A bottle rated to 6–12 bar is a sparkling-wine bottle. A secondary fermentation reaching 4–6 bar in a container not built for it is the most dangerous thing an amateur cidermaker routinely does.
About Traditional Welsh Cider PGI
Welsh cider-making very nearly stopped. By the late twentieth century commercial production in Wales had contracted to almost nothing, and what revived it was a small group of makers, mostly in Monmouthshire and the border country, who rebuilt from surviving trees and from Welsh varieties recovered by orchard groups. The protected name arrived late — decades after the English county registrations — and it was written by people who had watched what a loose specification does.
The result is a tighter document than its English counterparts. The name is Traditional Welsh Cider, and the adjective carries the whole-juice requirement: cider under this name is fermented from fresh juice, not built from concentrate and water. That single clause makes the designation say something a buyer can act on, which is not true of every geographical indication in the cider world.
The area is Wales as a whole rather than a delimited district, which reflects how thinly the orchards are spread rather than any claim that all Welsh land is equivalent. And the usual caution applies with full force: the registration is not a quality assessment, contains no tasting judgement, and does nothing to prevent excellent cider being made in Herefordshire, Somerset or anywhere else. What it does is make one word on a Welsh label mean something specific.
Styles this designation covers
Categories whose definition or characteristic practice this specification governs.
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 Wales — 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.