Medaille D’Or Apple Trees

• Bittersweet
• Very High Sugar
• Heavy Cropper
• “Vintage” Cider

Medaille d’Or is a traditional French cider variety. It is a bittersweet fruit which produces a sweet, astringent juice high in tannins and converts into a cider with high alcohol content and a strong, fruity flavor. One report states it contains 18.6% sugar, which ferments to 9% alcohol, but another report indicates 238 grams of sugar giving 14 to 15 per cent alcohol. It is one of the few apple varietals known to produce excellent single varietal “vintage” cider.

Medaille d’Or came from a seedling grown by Monsieur Goddard of Boisguillame, Rouen, France, and was awarded a gold medal in 1873 by the Societe Centrale D’Horticulture de Departement de la Seine Inferieure. It was introduced into England in 1884 by the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club where it was embraced for its outstanding cider qualities, and has since become a classic English cider variety.

Golden-yellow in color, covered with a marbling of brown russet, this cider apple often has a browner russet on the sun-exposed side. The flesh is tender and yellowish in color, and the juice is very sweet with a strong, not unpleasant, astringent aftertaste. The shape is oblate, broad at the base and often irregularly spherical.

The tree is vigorous and bears its fruits in clusters. Like many old English and French cider varieties it comes out of dormancy very late – in May, and the fruits don’t ripen until November.