Sensory descriptor
Dried fruit
Raisin and sultana character from long oxidative ageing, most often met in concentrated and fortified styles.
Also called Raisin, Sultana, Fig.
- Aroma family
- Oxidative
- Does it indicate a fault?
- It depends on the style it is met in
What causes it
Dried-fruit character develops where oxidation acts on a drink already high in sugar and in phenolic material. The relevant compounds include acetaldehyde and its condensation products with phenolics, sotolon at the low end of its range, and the C13-norisoprenoid damascenone, which carries a cooked and dried-fruit odour and forms from carotenoid precursors under acidic oxidative conditions. Time and sugar are the requirements, which is why the note belongs to ice cider, pommeau and long-barrelled tannic ciders rather than to dry table cider.
The compounds responsible
Where the molecule is established. Some descriptors in this lexicon name a compound the compound register does not yet hold a record for; those are named in the cause above instead.
Acetaldehyde
The compound sitting one step short of ethanol, which smells of bruised apple and sherry, binds most of the sulphite added to a cider, and is the chemical signature of oxidation.
Lactones
Cyclic esters that give peach and apricot character, formed from fatty acids and often carried in bound form, which is why stone-fruit notes can appear in a cider months after fermentation.
Fructose
The dominant sugar of apple juice and the sweetest of the common sugars, which is why apple juice tastes sweeter than its total sugar figure implies and why a stuck ferment leaves sweetness behind.
Total phenolics
The single number used to summarise everything phenolic in a juice, useful for comparing fruit and misleading whenever it is used to predict how a cider will taste.
What raises it
Processes that increase this character, or preserve it where it would otherwise be lost.
Oxidative maturation
Ageing a cider with a deliberate, measured oxygen supply so that tannins polymerise and soften and an aldehydic character develops on purpose, which is not the same thing as the oxidation fault.
Barrel ageing
Holding cider in wood — which may mean an old neutral vat used simply as a vessel, or fresh or spirit-seasoned oak used as a source of flavour, and the two are not the same operation.
Fortification
Adding distilled spirit to juice or cider so that fermentation cannot proceed, the classic route to pommeau and a step that generally takes the product outside the legal category of cider.
Ice concentration
Freezing pressed juice and drawing off the unfrozen fraction, so that water is removed as ice and everything else in the juice is left behind more concentrated.
Where it is usually met
Fruit and styles this character is recorded in. A record here is where the descriptor is commonly found, not a claim that every example shows it.
About Dried fruit
Dried fruit is an expected part of the profile of aged pommeau and older ice cider, where it arrives alongside toffee, dried apricot and walnut as a coherent cluster.
In a dry table cider it indicates advanced oxidation and should be recorded with the accompanying loss of freshness rather than as an independent fruit note.
Others in the oxidative family
Sherry, walnut, bruised apple, cardboard.
Bruised apple
The brown, soft, faintly sweet note of enzymatic browning, met wherever apple tissue or juice has met air.
Sherry
A nutty, oxidised, faintly volatile character from acetaldehyde and sotolon in long-air-exposed cider.
Walnut
A dry, slightly bitter nut note from advanced phenolic oxidation, characteristic of long-matured tannic cider.
Wet cardboard
The flat, papery note of (E)-2-nonenal and related aldehydes, the sensory signature of oxidative staling.
Dried apple
Concentrated, leathery apple character from moderate oxidation, sitting between fresh fruit and full oxidative development.
Hazelnut
A lighter, sweeter nut note from early oxidative development and from lees contact.
Maderised
Heat-and-air damage together: cooked, browned, flat character from cider stored warm in the presence of oxygen.
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 ice cider — Ice cider is made by concentrating apple juice by freezing before fermentation, so that the ferment starts from a very high sugar level and stops sweet. It is a Quebec speciality with a protected definition there.
- Which sugar is most of the sugar in apple juice — Fructose, by a long way. Apple juice carries roughly twice as much fructose as glucose, with a smaller amount of sucrose, and fructose is the sweetest of the three on the tongue.
- How is ice cider made — Apple juice is frozen and the sugar-rich liquid separated from the ice, either by freezing pressed juice or by leaving fruit on the tree into winter. Fermentation then stops of its own accord well before the concentrated sugar is used up.
- Should i ferment cider in an oak barrel — A sound, full barrel is a fine maturation vessel; a leaky, half-empty or previously spoiled one is the fastest route to vinegar. Wood cannot be sterilised, so a barrel carries whatever lived in it before.
- Does cider contain antioxidants — Cider carries apple polyphenols, and tannic bittersweet ciders carry considerably more than pale ones made from dessert fruit. What that means for health is a clinical question this site does not adjudicate.
- What does vintage mean on a cider — On a cider label, vintage means the fruit came from a single named harvest year rather than from blended seasons. In most markets the word is not legally controlled for cider.
Where to go next
- The sensory model — The thirteen structural dimensions and the twenty aroma families, in full.
- Compounds — The chemistry behind the words.
- Troubleshooting — When a perception turns out to be a problem, this is where it is diagnosed.
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.
University of Vermont cider research
University of Vermont Extension · university · retrieved 2026-08-24
The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing
Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24
Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.