A bit over a year ago, the powers-that-be at work decided that bringing in a bunch of fruit for us employee plebes would be a nice treat. This ended up becoming a weekly thing—every Monday, a variety of fruit appears in the break room around lunch time. Usually, the stuff is pretty banal, but today, we had an interesting apple variety I’d never seen before.
This apple was medium in size, with interesting coloration: It was half green, and half a very purplish red. And when I say “half”, I don’t mean with some various blushes or speckles of color. Rather, one solid half was the purple-red, and one solid half was green. (When I asked a coworker if he could identify it, he jokingly suggested it was a Harvey Dent apple.) All the apples had similar coloration.
The flesh was white, with a fairly sweet but unremarkable flavor. It was very juicy. There were no stickers on any of the apples providing a clue—I looked. And I neglected to take a picture, I’m afraid. Other than its striking color and exceptionally juicy nature, this wasn’t a rapturous apple experience—I still prefer Pink Ladies and Grannies Smith, but this mystery apple was pretty good. And I’ve never seen an apple that shade of purple-red before. What kind of apple did I eat today?
Are you talking about something like this – or a fuzzier line like a not-quite-ripe Braemar?
Was it extremely crispy to the point of being hard? Arkansas Black. Often seen with an all-over dark purplish skin, but sometimes you can have yellow or green areas.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:2, topic:667268”]
Are you talking about something like this – or a fuzzier line like a not-quite-ripe Braemar?
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Definitely fuzzier. More like the apple on the left in this picture.
I don’t think this is it; every apple had a great deal of green to it, and I remember the color being a bit lighter. It was fairly crisp, though, which is how I like my apples. I avoid the Galas and Braeburns they often bring in, for this reason—I find those to be consistently on the softer side.
Hm. Winesap?
As you can see the colors vary widely but can include a deep dark red with green. Did your apple look like this? Winesap is a tart, crisp apple, and native to Virginia so it isn’t well known in many parts of the country. Also called Stayman, or Stayman Winesap.
Empire is another dark-red-with-green, tart/sweet crisp apple.
I think Empire is looking more likely than anything so far. I’m reading that it’s a cross between a McIntosh and a Red Delicious, which sounds about right in terms of the shade of red and the large green areas. I’m also seeing some pictures of Paula Red apples that look similar. Probably can’t get a 100% positive ID on this sucker, sadly.
Thanks for the help, guys. I hope next week, if they’re to spring an unfamiliar apple on me, they at least put stickers on them. Or at least I’ll grab my phone and take a picture.
ETA: Found this picture, purportedly of Paula Reds, which looks spot-on.
