Thanks! I’ll take a look at these.
Northern Spy is my favorite apple. I get a bushel every year, late October, from a local orchard. He has one tree left, removed all the others to make room for newer varieties. Ate the last one in April. Great eating, store well, and make good pies.
I have six Cox Orange Pippen planted along with a dozen other varieties. It’ll be awhile before they fruit.
Here is a good site for reviews of apple varieties,
I don’t see these much, but when I had a regular source, these were my favorite.
I also dig McIntosh, they’re a classic, but they tend to bruise easily, and are most often found in big bags that guarantee lots of bruising. Macouns are very nice too.
Baldwin; progenitor of the Mcintosh and Cortland varieties, tart, juicy with a unique “bite”, an antique heirloom apple which isn’t seen too much anymore, great for pies, very robust for storage
Heirloom Red Delicious, not the mealymouthed juicy mess currently at grocery stores, those are identifiable by their nearly perfect deep red skin, an heirloom RD will have a faint green vertical striping and be darker red on the sunnyside
Then there’s the Mystery Tree in our field, i’m not sure if it’s an antique heirloom that isn’t grown anymore, or a unique genetic cross to our property…
the apples are medium sized, extremely late ripening (late October), have an overall greenish-yellow color, with a pinkish-rose cast where they’re kissed by the sun, the flesh is firm and dry, and the flavor, oh the flavor…
…like biting into a piece of honeycomb, intense sweetness, but not cloying or sickly-sweet, just a pure, clean sweetness that compliments the crisp, dry flesh, this one is a great pie/eating/cidering apple
I plan to clone off a few cuttings in the fall and graft them onto semi-dwarf donor trees, and I want to get at least one planted in a pot as a spire/Comstock
There’s also another Mystery tree that I have dubbed Mystery 2.0, the apples have an identical appearance to Mystery, but they also have a Baldwin-esque tartness and bite in addition to Mystery’s intense sweetness, this one is clearly a cross between the Baldwin and the Mystery, another great pie/cidering apple
If your mystery tree really is an heirloom variety, there are people who would be interested in getting seeds, as they try to cultivate the older varieties.
Seeds will not breed true, witness Mystery 2.0, in order to get more of the desired variety, you need to clone/graft a branch or bud of the host tree onto a donor tree or rootstock.
The apple fruit is the result of pollen from a different tree, so you’ll always get genetic drift.
True. But whether or not either Mystery is an heirloom, they sound very much worth propagating. And there are indeed people who would love to have a chance to get cuttings in order to do so.
What are you telling me? Are the stories I heard as a kid of Johnny Appleseed wandering around barefoot with a bag of apple seeds planting new orchards everywhere not true? Next you’ll be telling me that Paul Bunyan wasn’t really that big.
Couldn’t agree more - they’re really the only apple I eat. Tasting notes would help - so I would say that rather than the typical tangy flavour of an apple, there’s something rather earthy and chewy (flavourwise) about them. The wiki page says “It has a rich, nutty flavour and crisp, firm and fairly juicy flesh.”
Anything to add, NB?
There is a somewhat similar French variety called Gris(e) du Canada aka (apparently) Reinette du Canada. The wiki page notes that “it is considered as the default russet apple of France”.
j
Johnny Appleseed (Chapman) was real. However, his plans for the apples were for hard cider, not for eating. Actually, the part of the apple eaten has the same DNA as the rest of the tree. The seeds are the babies with different DNA, so you never know what the apples you’ll get from a seedling tree will be like. Sometimes they’re good (that’s how some new popular varieties arise), usually they’re not, but they won’t be the same as the tree from whose apple they came.
Best apple in the world, if you like 'em tart, is Belle de Boskoop.
Apple Scientists are rapidly bringing new apples into the market. Honeycrisp was introduced only about 15 years ago. Sugar crisp are even newer. Cosmic Crisp newer yet.
On the other side, Apple Historians are digging into the past and re-introducing forgotten breeds which disappeared during the 20th century when pomologists were rushing to get “perfect” (and tasteless) Red Delicious apples into supermarkets everywhere.
The next few decades are going to be a good time for apple lovers.
My personal taste is for a tart apple over a sweet one. Stayman Winesap is my personal favorite.
Your taste is correct and your affection for Stayman Winesap is not misplaced. But have you ever tried Belle de Boskoop?
We get Gravensteins around here for a brief period in August. It’s one of my favorite apples for flavor, though it’s not as crisp as some. Their flavor is intense, without being too sweet or too tart. Their biggest problem is that they don’t store well. A Gravenstein goes from underripe to overripe in a few weeks.
A local store carried some Ashmead’s Kernel apples last year. They were very tart, just the thing for someone like me who doesn’t like the supersweet apples. I understand this variety must be stored for a while to be edible, otherwise they’re too tannic and sour.
Another tart apple I like is Rhode Island Greening. They’re hard to find where I live. There’s an apple farm within driving distance that grows them, without whom I’d never see them. A lot of people think of it as a cooking apple, but I like eating them fresh.
Newtown Pippin used to be common, but there’s only one local produce market in my area that carries it now. It’s another apple that should be allowed to mature before eating. When freshly picked they’re very tannic, but with age they develop a sort of pineapple flavor.
Ooh, a topic near and dear to my heart.
My favorite apple is ashmeads kernel. It’s very tart, very sweet, very crisp, and has a nice apple flavor. But it’s hard to get. It’s also small and ugly.
Other apples I like:
Jonathan: rich apple flavor, good sweet/tart balance, and when it’s fresh it holds it’s shape well when it’s cooked, and is my favorite pie apple
Mccoun: this apple is only grown in the Northeast, and doesn’t ship or keep very well, but at peak it has the most fabulous crunch. It snaps with each bite. It also has a nice Macintosh-like flavor.
Macintosh: this is the default apple in the Northeast. Great flavor, but a poor keeper, and when it gets old is gets soft. It makes my favorite apple sauce, though. Also good for cider.
Cortland: nearly as tasty as a Mac, but it doesn’t brown. Great for fruit salad.
Liberty: another Mac-like apple. This one is very disease-resistant and can be grown organically on the east coast. It also succeeds further south than most of the Mac-like apples. When i lived in New Jersey it was one of my favorites.
Stayman winesap: a firmer apple that keeps pretty well. It has a slightly wine-like flavor and relatively dense flesh
Breaburn: a tasty dense apple that keeps well. They grow excellent breaburn in New Zealand, which has reverse seasons from us, so this is my favorite out-of-season apple.
Opal: another dense-fleshed apple. When fresh it has a nice crunch and an attractive, aromatic flavor.
Honey crisp: the flavor is a little dull, but it’s reliably sweet, crisp, and tart enough, and it’s always pleasant to eat. (Although it can be a bit too large.)
Ida Red: a huge apple that keeps reasonably well and has decent flavor and holds its shape while cooked. This is my favorite late-season cooking apple, both because of its flavor and texture, and because the size makes it so easy to process.
Caville Blanc: a French cooking apple that holds its shape and texture like nobody’s business when it’s really fresh. It also has a nice flavor. This makes fabulous tarts when you can get it.
Gravenstein: one of the earliest good apples. It doesn’t keep well, but for a couple of weeks it’s the best thing in the market.
So many good apples…
Two I haven’t had that I’m looking for are cosmic crisp and Karmin d’sonneville.
Since you’re in northern VA, check out farmers markets from late summer into fall. I get the best apples, in widest varieties, locally grown. I look forward to Staymans and Winesaps every fall, and the farmers often have new apple varieties to try, too.
I miss Empire apples. Great dual-purpose apple that’s pretty hardy in transit. Plus, I used to get them from an orchard a few miles from the house. Ever since leaving New York, I’ve never seen them. Guess they don’t go this far west.
I’ve never seen it in the Northeast. Where do they grow?
I never ran into a Macoun until I left NE Ohio for Connecticut in 1978. They just don’t grow ‘em in Ohio.
I’ve bought stayman winesap at orchards in the ne. I may not have seen it at a supermarket, though.
I’ve read that mccoun doesn’t grow well outside the Northeast, and farmers who try it elsewhere get a mediocre apple at best. Some apples are fussy about climate, and perhaps soil.
We got loads of Stayman Winesaps. I was curious about the Belle de Boskoop Kimstu was talking about.