Style
Poiré
French perry, made chiefly in southern Normandy and Maine from local perry pears, characteristically sweet, low in alcohol and firmly sparkling.
- Family
- Perry
- Sweetness
- Sweet
- Carbonation
- Sparkling
- Strength
- 1.5–4.5% ABV
- Serve at
- 7–10 °C
- Where
- France
French law regulates poiré alongside cidre, requiring pure pear juice. Within that framework, Poiré Domfront holds a controlled appellation with a far stricter specification. Most French poiré is made outside the appellation and under the general rules.
What makes it this style
- It is made from pure pear juice, as French law requires, with no added water or sugar.
- The fruit is French perry pears grown on tall standard trees, chiefly in the Domfrontais and the neighbouring parts of Normandy and Maine.
- The fermentation is arrested — often by keeving in the same manner as Norman cider — leaving substantial residual sugar and low alcohol.
- The drink is bottled with sugar remaining and finishes its carbonation in bottle, giving a firm sparkle.
What varies inside the category
Every style covers a range. This is what legitimately differs between two examples that are both correctly called by this name.
- Whether the poiré carries the Domfront appellation, which imposes a cultivar minimum and orchard requirements that the general category does not.
- How complete the keeve was, and therefore where the sweetness and alcohol land.
- Tannin, which varies considerably between French perry pear cultivars.
- Ferment character, from clean and floral to noticeably funky.
- Clarity and sediment, since these are bottle-fermented and often unfiltered.
Sensory profile
Scored as bands rather than points, because the category genuinely covers a range and a single figure would claim a precision it does not have.
| Dimension | Typical | Range | Variation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sweetness | Sweet | Some variation | |
| Acidity | Moderate | Some variation | |
| Bitterness | Slight | Some variation | |
| Tannin | Moderate | Some variation | |
| Astringency | Slight | Some variation | |
| Body | Medium | Some variation | |
| Carbonation | Sparkling | Some variation | |
| Alcohol | Very low | Consistent | |
| Freshness | Fresh | Some variation | |
| Fruit character | Pronounced | Consistent | |
| Phenolic character | Trace | Some variation | |
| Fermentation character | Evident | Some variation | |
| Oxidative character | Trace | Some variation |
What you are likely to smell and taste
Each descriptor links to what actually produces it.
About Poiré
French poiré occupies a position that English perry never quite reached: it is a recognised category in national drinks law, it has an appellation, and it is made in a form — sweet, weak, firmly sparkling — that has an obvious place at a table. The distance between poiré and English perry is therefore larger than the shared fruit chemistry suggests, and it is mostly a difference of intention.
The intention is the same as in Norman cider: to end up with a drink that never finished fermenting. Pear juice is macerated and pressed, clarified — frequently by keeving, with the pectin cap forming as it does in apple juice — and fermented slowly and cold until the nutrient-starved yeast stops. Bottled with sugar in solution, it conditions in glass and arrives with a genuine mousse rather than the light bead of many English perries.
Sorbitol underwrites the whole style. Because the yeast cannot touch it, a French poiré has a sweetness floor independent of how far the ferment ran, and at the very low alcohols the tradition works at — often between two and four per cent — that unfermentable fraction is a large part of what the drinker perceives. It is also why poiré at such low strength does not taste thin: the sorbitol contributes body as well as sweetness.
The fruit is a distinct French perry pear inventory, with Plant de Blanc as its most significant cultivar, grown on the enormous standard trees that define the Domfrontais landscape. These are tannic pears, and the tannin is what keeps the sugar in check — the same architecture as Norman cider, transposed onto a different fruit.
A drinker used to English perry meets something recognisably related and differently pitched: paler, sweeter, much more sparkling, lower in alcohol, with pear, elderflower and honey on the nose and a light astringent grip at the end. It is served cold in a wine glass or a bolée, and in Normandy it belongs at the start of a meal as readily as at the end.
Tasting it
What to attend to here specifically, and what is routinely misread. The second list is the more useful one.
What to look for
- The French idiom, which favours a fine persistent mousse and a lower alcohol than English perry. Both traditions ferment the same fruit; they differ on what to do with it, and a French maker stops the ferment where an English one usually lets it run.
- Sorbitol sweetness against the acid the French pear cultivars supply. This is the balance the style runs on: the sweetness is not a sugar the maker left and the acid is not a correction, and a poiré that reads flat is usually one where the fruit was short of acid rather than long on sugar.
- Whether it carries an appellation, which changes what is guaranteed rather than what is good. Domfront requires a stated majority of Plant de Blanc; the wider category requires none of that, and a very good poiré may sit outside any appellation entirely.
What gets misread
- Treating poiré and perry as translations. They are the same drink made in two traditions with different cultivars, different carbonation practice and different expectations of strength.
- Reading the low alcohol as weakness. A poiré at 4% is not a diluted drink: it is one whose fermentation was arrested — by keeving, by chilling, by racking off the yeast — so that the sugar and the sorbitol both stayed in the bottle. The strength is what was given up to keep the sweetness.
Cold, around 8–10 °C, in a glass with a bowl and poured to keep the mousse. The carbonation is doing the work that acid does in a sharper drink, so a poiré that has gone flat is a different and much sweeter proposition.
What it is mistaken for, and how to tell
One observation per pair, chosen because it separates them. Several of these are not styles at all — a commercial term, a legal category, or a fault wearing the same description.
- Perry — Tradition and cultivar base rather than definition. Both are fermented pear juice.
- Poiré Domfront — One appellation inside the category, with a cultivar requirement.
How it is made
The methods that define or commonly produce this style.
Standard orchard systems
Widely spaced, tall-trunked, long-lived fruit trees over grassland — a family of related but genuinely different systems running from the Three Counties through Normandy to the Austrian meadows.
Maceration
Holding milled pomace before pressing so that phenolics, aroma precursors and pectin have time to move out of the solid tissue and into the juice.
Keeving
Forming a floating pectin gel that lifts nutrients and solids out of the juice, so that the ferment starves before it finishes and leaves natural sweetness behind.
Wild fermentation
Letting the microflora already present on the fruit and in the press house carry the ferment, in a succession rather than as a single organism.
Bottle conditioning
Carbonating cider by letting a second fermentation finish inside the sealed bottle, so the gas is generated where it is going to stay.
Racking
Moving cider off the sediment it has thrown, which both cleans the liquid and — by taking yeast and nitrogen away with the deposit — slows what is left of the ferment.
Fruit it is made from
Where it is made
Protected designations
What can go wrong
Faults this style is particularly exposed to, given how it is made.
Pectin haze
A persistent, slightly viscous haze that will not settle, caused by pectin from the fruit remaining in solution as a colloid.
Unwanted refermentation
Fermentation restarting in a sealed container, generating carbon dioxide that was not planned for and pressure that a bottle may not withstand.
Gushing
Cider that erupts from the bottle on opening, either because it is over-pressurised or because something in it is nucleating the dissolved gas violently.
Brettanomyces character
Farmyard, horse-blanket, smoky and sticking-plaster aromas from *Brettanomyces* yeast converting hydroxycinnamic acids into volatile phenols.
Related styles
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.
Perry
The fermented drink of pears, a tradition parallel to cider rather than derived from it, in which unfermentable sorbitol leaves a sweetness the maker never chose.
Sparkling perry
Perry carrying a persistent bubble, a presentation that suits pear’s aromatics and residual sorbitol and has a documented history going back to the seventeenth century.
Cidre de Normandie
Protected Normandy cider made from the region’s bitter and bittersweet fruit, characteristically low in alcohol, sweet-edged and lightly sparkling.
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.
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 perry — Perry is an alcoholic drink made by fermenting the juice of pears, traditionally of specific perry pear cultivars rather than eating pears. It is to pears what cider is to apples, and has its own history in the three counties of England and in Normandy.
- How does cider ferment — Yeast consumes the sugar in apple juice and produces roughly equal masses of ethanol and carbon dioxide, along with the esters and higher alcohols that give cider much of its aroma. In a wild ferment several yeast species take turns before *Saccharomyces* finishes the job.
- What is keeved cider — A cider made naturally sweet by starving the yeast rather than by adding sugar. Keeving strips nutrients out of the juice before fermentation, so the ferment slows and stops with fruit sugar still in it, and nothing has been put back.
- What is the difference between french cidre and english cider — French cidre is usually sweeter, weaker and more carbonated, because fermentation is arrested while sugar remains. English cider is more often fermented dry and finished still or lightly sparkling, and is stronger for it.
- How do i clear a cloudy cider
- How is sparkling cider made
Where to go next
- All styles — The full range, grouped by what defines each one.
- Sweetness decoder — What the word on the label means, in the system that defines it.
- Serving — Temperature, glass and how to open it without losing half of it.
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.
Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)
IFPC · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The French technical institute for cider production. The authority for the French cultivar classification families, for keeving as an industrial process, and for the pectin and nitrogen chemistry that keeving depends on.
Research on pear juice composition and sorbitol in perry
Various journals and institute reports · peer-reviewed literature · registered as competent for this subject
The evidence base for the single most important chemical difference between cider and perry: pears carry substantial sorbitol, which yeast does not ferment, so a fully fermented perry retains sweetness a fully fermented cider cannot.
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.