Bedan des Parts is a traditional French hard-cider variety, widely-grown in the cider-producing region of Normandy. It produces a good quality bittersweet juice, which is usually blended with other varieties.
The apples are harvested towards the end of November, when the skin has turned from yellow-green to golden-orange.
In traditional French orchards production on mature trees will be in the range 30-35 tonnes per hectare, which is above average for French cider varieties.
Bedan flowers very late - towards the end of May or early June. This makes it a good choice for areas prone to late frosts, but you will need other late-blooming apple varieties nearby to help with pollination.
Bedan is regarded as susceptible to fireblight and scab in French orchards.
The origins of this variety are unknown, but it has been grown in Normandie since the mid-19th century.
Cider production in Europe is traditionally associated with three main regions - Asturias in north west Spain, Bretagne and Normandie in north west France, and the "west country" area of south-west England. These regions all face the Atlantic ocean and have cool temperate maritime climates.
Cider can of course be made with any variety of apples, but in these three regions apple varieties have evolved which are specifically intended for cider production - they have high levels of tannins which give "body" to the resulting cider, but which make them very unpalatable to eat fresh.
Good quality cider is almost always made with a blend of different apple varieties, using bitter, sweet, and sharp flavour components. It is quite common to mix in regular cooking and dessert apples to lend extra flavours.
If you are in an area with a hotter continental climate (with average summer maximum temperatures routinely over 30C) then you might want to consider using apple varieties that can withstand warmer temperatures, but still have good juice qualities. In this case rather than using European varieties you might want to seek inspiration from the very different "hard cider" traditions of North America, where dessert and crab-apples are widely used.
We have a good range of traditional English and French cider varieties, as well as a number of mainstream apple varieties with good juice qualities that lend themselves to cider production.