Sensory descriptor
Nettle
A sharp green-vegetal note with a faint sulphurous edge, met in early-picked and reductively handled cider.
- Aroma family
- Herbal and vegetal
- Does it indicate a fault?
- It depends on the style it is met in
What causes it
Nettle names a green note that is sharper and more penetrating than cut grass, and the additional edge is generally sulphidic: it arises where green-leaf aldehydes coincide with low levels of dimethyl sulphide or with volatile thiols short of their fruity expression. Reductive handling — closed vessels, minimal oxygen, high sulphite — favours the combination, since it both preserves the aldehyde fraction and keeps sulphur compounds in their more volatile reduced forms.
A trace of nettle is a normal component of green character in young reductive cider. Where the sulphur component grows the perception moves out of the herbal family altogether and into the sulphur one, and the appropriate descriptor changes with it.
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.
trans-2-Hexenal
The sharper, more penetrating green aldehyde of the same pathway as hexanal, made from linolenic rather than linoleic acid, and a marker of underripe fruit.
Dimethyl sulphide
A sulphur compound that reads as cooked vegetable in quantity and adds an indefinable savoury depth in trace, and which builds slowly during storage rather than during fermentation.
Mercaptans
What hydrogen sulphide becomes if it is left alone: onion, garlic and rubber notes that are far harder to remove than the gas they came from.
What raises it
Processes that increase this character, or preserve it where it would otherwise be lost.
Oxygen management in fermentation
Giving the yeast the oxygen it needs early to build viable membranes, then excluding it once fermentation is under way and especially once it slows.
Sulphiting
Adding sulphur dioxide to juice to suppress spoilage organisms and oxidative browning, at a level that only means anything once the juice pH is known.
Cold maturation
Holding cider at low temperature so that it settles bright, sheds colloidal material and stops changing microbially, without any additive or treatment being applied.
Sterile filtration
Membrane filtration at a rating that retains viable yeast and bacteria, which is what allows a sweet cider to be shelf-stable without heat or preservative — provided the filling that follows is aseptic.
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 Nettle
Nettle is a useful early warning of reduction in a cider that is otherwise clean, since it appears before the more obvious rubber and cabbage notes and is often dismissed as simple greenness.
It responds to the same interventions as reduction generally: splash racking, aeration and, where appropriate, copper contact.
Others in the herbal and vegetal family
Hay, grass, hedgerow, green leaf.
Hay
A dry, sweet-grassy note from coumarin and degraded green-leaf volatiles, characteristic of traditional farmhouse cider.
Black tea
A dry, tannic, faintly leafy note from polymerised procyanidins with mild oxidative development.
Cut grass
A sharp green note from cis-3-hexenol and cis-3-hexenal, the same green-leaf volatiles released by mown grass.
Hedgerow
A mixed green-and-floral note combining leaf volatiles with faint blossom and a damp edge, common in wild-fermented cider.
Straw
A dry, dusty, cereal-like note from advanced degradation of green volatiles in aged cider.
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.
- Why is sulphite added to cider — Sulphur dioxide suppresses spoilage bacteria and wild yeast before fermentation and protects the finished cider from oxidation. How much of it is active depends strongly on pH, which is why low-acid juice is harder to protect.
- Does cider need oxygen to ferment — Yeast needs a little oxygen early on to build the sterols it uses to stay healthy, but the ferment itself is anaerobic. After the first days oxygen is a liability, because it feeds acetic acid bacteria and oxidises the cider.
- How is supermarket cider made
- Why does my dry cider still taste sweet — Alcohol, glycerol and ripe fruit aroma all read as sweetness even when no sugar remains. High alcohol in particular is perceived as sweet before it is perceived as strong.
- Pasteurising or sterile filtering — what is the difference
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.
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.
Cider and perry production technical training material
Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy · reference work · registered as competent for this subject
Searched again on 2026-08-25 and it remains the one printed source here that a bibliographic check cannot fix, because it is not a published work with an edition. It is course material issued to participants of a training programme, so there is no catalogue record to verify, no ISBN, and no lawful public copy. Its state stays `registered` for that reason rather than through inattention.
Washington State University cider research programme
Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center · university · passage verified 2026-08-24
The single most useful open cider dataset CiderHQ has found. The programme’s cultivar performance database gives juice chemistry, orchard behaviour, bloom and harvest timing and cider-maker tasting notes for 73 cultivars grown at one maritime site over fifteen years, and — unusually — publishes its classification thresholds alongside its figures, so the classification can be checked rather than taken on trust. It also states outright that its results diverge from the English ones. Read in full on 2026-08-24 and transcribed into `data/trials/wsu-mount-vernon.ts`; four published figures were found to be impossible and are withheld there with their reasons.