The improvement of esters content in cider by adding the nutrients into the apple juice during fermentation was investigated. By conducting the Plackett Burman experiment design, the factors affected 〖JP2〗the production of esters significantly, were selected, i.e. leucine, glutamine, pyridoxine and zincchloride. Subsequently, the steepest accent design was conducted to determine the central points of the four selected factors. The central points were 35 mg/L for leucine, 90 mg/L for glutamine, 0.3 mg/L for pyridoxine and 1.25 mg/L for zincchloride. The factors were optimized further by conducting the quadratic rotating combined design experiment. The optimizing condition was that adding 34.8 mg/L of leucine, 84 mg/L of glutamine, 0.24 mg/L of pyridoxine and 1.30 mg/L zincchloride to the fermentation liquor. Under this optimizing condition, the content of esters in the final cider achieved 5.29 mg/L.