I ate 71 apples

[calimac]

Not whole apples, please. Little cut-up chunks, in piles on labeled plates in a row on long tables, of seventy-one different varieties of (mostly) heirloom apples, browsed over by a small crowd of pomaceous gourmets bearing toothpicks to spear the samples with.

The grand apple tasting session could be found at the back acres of the small harvest festival subsisting in the gentle drizzle at Wilder Ranch State Park outside Santa Cruz, which I ventured over the Hill to attend mostly for them apples. Also present were a booth selling roasted corn on the cob, a pair of draft horses bearing a real plow (for the children to awe over), a booth with slices of apple and pumpkin pies, bluegrass musicians and a barbershop quartet, and another booth urging you to vote Yes on 21. (That's the proposition that would fund state parks out of a vehicle license fee.) And after you'd dined on the apples, corn, and pie, you could - and many including me did - walk it off on the mile-and-a-half trail out to the scenic cliffs above the roaring surf that's energetically trying to re-create the natural bridge that collapsed several years ago a mile down the coast.

The apples, allegedly arranged in order from sweet to tart, ranged from the mealy or dry and a few with odd or unpleasant tastes to a large number that met my preferred criteria of being sharply crisp and moist with a taste mixing the tart and sweet. Some had redder flesh than others; some oxidized faster; some attracted most of the attending yellowjackets. I took notes on the rating sheet the customers were given, but soon found myself running out of synonyms for "crisp", "tart", "sweet", and "mealy". "Fruity" would have been an epithet juste, but a bit otiose.

I don't expect to see many of these in my local grocery soon (indeed, there were only five varieties I was sure offhand that I'd ever had before), but I feel far more wise in the ways of apples.

The lineup of apples, in that alleged ordering from sweet to tart - I found about 3/4s of them seemed roughly properly placed - included:
1. Candycrisp
2. Ambrosia
3. Takane
4. White Winter Pearmain
5. Hudson's Golden Gem
6. Pacific Rose
7. Silken
8. Golden Delicious
9. Orin
10. Swaar
11. Crestan
12. Shizuka
13. Oxford Black
14. Kogetsu
15. Margil
16. Hidden Rose
17. My Jewell
18. Golden Russet
19. Rubinette
20. Tompkins King
21. Valentine Sweet
22. Carter's Blue
23. Cannon Pearmain
24. Katherine
25. Fukonishiki
26. Reinette Rouge Etoilee
27. Cranberry Pippin
28. Fortune (NY 429)
29. Honeycrisp
30. Wyken
31. Wismer's Dessert
32. Spigold
33. School Road
34. Pinova
35. Macoun
36. Hoover
37. Waltana
38. Calville Blanc
39. Barnack Beauty
40. Ida Red
41. Merton Russet
42. Orelans Reinette
43. Brushy Mountain Limbertwig
44. Allington Pippin
45. Ashmeads Kernel
46. Old Nonpareil
47. Pink Parfait
48. Baldwin
49. King David
50. Arkansas Black
51. Rosemary Russet
52. Wickson Crab
53. Karmijn de Sonnaville
54. Cornish Aromatic
55. Spitzenberg
56. Allen's Everlasting
57. Elstar
58. Newtown Pippin
59. Edwards' Winter
60. Christmas Pink
61. Belle de Boskoop
62. Court Pendu Plat
63. Tydemann's Late Orange
64. Thornberry
65. Paragon
66. Suntan
67. Dumelow's Seedling
68. Winter Gravenstein
69. Rubaiyat
70. Grenadine
71. Coe's Golden Drop
On the questionnaire requesting our three favorites, I almost arbitrarily listed #6 (Pacific Rose), #24 (Katherine), and #48 (Baldwin).

Comments

[pyffe.livejournal.com]

Damn! That would be a wonderful thing to attend. To get to taste them all side-by-side like that... I'm jealous. Any ideas on how I can find something like this in PA?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Hunt your local newspaper's listings of obscure cultural events. That's what I did to find this.

[pyffe.livejournal.com]

After I posted this, I poked around. In my area, they were all about 1-2 weeks ago. Next year!!!

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Here's a list of apple festivals. There are definitely heritage orchards in northeast PA and nearby in NJ. Whereabouts are you?

[pyffe.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm 1/2 way between Allentown and Harrisburg. I live in a town called Schuylkill Haven. You?

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

Oh my! That sounds perfectly marvellous. I've had Arkansas Black (hard hard apple!), Golden Delicious (duh), and Ida Red, oh, and Honeycrisp. I've heard of Gravensteins (and may have had a different variety) and Macouns, but Macouns do not grow in Michigan, I've been told. My personal favorite of the ones available here is the Winesap.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Gravensteins are a famous local apple - they mostly grow in the Sebastopol area north of San Francisco - with a very short season, making them even more prized. I like Honeycrisp, would have to get used to Arkansas Black, and did not care for Ida Red at all, or maybe it was just that individual apple.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

OMG. I am envious.

I've had five or so also. I can't for the life of me recall seeing Macouns on sale in CA. They're grown in the northeast and are a most wonderful apple, with a superb texture and balance of sweet and tart.

Of the apples I can get regularly, I'd say the Arkansas Black is my favorite for flavor, the Honeycrisp for texture.

The Winesap is a fine apple; I like the complexity of the flavor.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The growers who supplied the apples were members of the Monterey chapter of California Rare Fruit Growers; you could try contacting them.

I like and can get Honeycrisp, and snap them up during their short season. Arkansas Black was new to me. From my notes here, I found its taste a bit strong, but less unappealing than some.

Again from my notes, the taste of the Macoun struck me as being in the same family as the Delicious, which is not my preference in apples, but it was a good and crispy example of that family.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Macouns grown in the northeast are quite different from Delicious. I wonder if the milder climate here makes for a sweeter or less complex flavor.