Bittersweet · 1 trees planted · confidence medium
A classic French bittersweet with small oblate yellow fruit flushed pink, unsuitable for eating. It presses to a rich amber juice with honeyed sugar, notes of vanilla and grass, and a long bitter finish, so it is used to add body and tannin to both hard and sweet cider. Prolific and easy to grow with a vigorous, spreading habit.
Disease: Somewhat susceptible to scab, powdery mildew and canker, and specifically sensitive to fireblight during bloom. That bloom-time fireblight sensitivity is the key planting decision here: pair it with a fireblight-resistant rootstock (G.890 or G.935) rather than MM.106.
Discrepancies: Origin story, bittersweet class and fireblight sensitivity agree across four independent nurseries including Cummins. Not in the WSU database, and notably it appears on cider.org.uk only in the Geneva, NY table rather than the Long Ashton table — meaning the North American compositional record derives from the USDA Geneva repository, the same collection that produced the documented Tremlett's Bitter mislabel. Recommend treating US-sourced Amere de Berthcourt provenance as unverified until fruit characters are checked against French descriptions (small, oblate, yellow with pink blush). No source gives SG or a bloom group; bloom group 4 is inferred from French bittersweets generally being late-blooming plus the reported bloom-time fireblight exposure, so it is the weakest field in this record.