Adam's Apples

Crisp, reliable Fuji was Honeycrisp before there was Honeycrisp.  ¶  Fuji's development in Japan was interrupted by World War II, and the apple was not released until 1962.  ¶  Today it is a mainstay, available in supermarkets year round. Fuji accounts for about 25% of US apple production , behind only Gala and Red Delicious. It's easy to understand the appeal of this crisp and delicately flavored apple. Some Fuji fans would never eat anything else. But my mission is to lure you out of the rut you may not know you are in. If you are curious, give these Fuji-adjacent apples a try.

There are buds on the branches of the apple trees today at Hutchins Farm in Concord, Massachusetts. A line of younger apple trees is visible in the distance.  ¶  After a week of sleet and snow, yesterday's eclipse seemed to mark a change in the weather and the start of spring.  ¶ 

I've been enjoying, of all things, Gingergold apples that I found in a local supermarket.  ¶  Every Gingergold I have ever had has been local and fresh. The commercial space they occupy is pretty far from that contested by Honeycrisp and its pretenders.  ¶  Yet these Gingergolds had clearly been in industrial-grade storage . Each wore a glistening coating of wax . In August, Gingergold is refreshing and light, sweet and a little spicy, and very easy to like.

Mourning the death of a friend, and of a business into which they had put heart and soul, Katie Mather and her husband Tom left their shuttered bar and came south, to Kent, in the fall, to pick apples.  ❝  Now I am standing among rows of Jonagold apples listening to the rumble of an old tractor in a nearby field.... Tom is sitting in a fold-up camping chair making some brews on a camping stove outside.... The sun shines.

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Apples go best with friends.  ¶  If in the off season you miss thinking about apples, I invite you to browse some particularly interesting exchanges in comments that readers share on this blog.  ¶  They really are the best thing here.  ¶ 

The pretty darlings sleep yesterday at Hutchins Farm in Concord, Massachusetts.

photo: ubaidhulla adam  ¶  Midwinter is the time each year when I rate the previous year's apples, on a qualitative scale from one to three stars .  ¶  I've already published my one-star ratings for 2023 , and today I award two stars, "worth a journey."  ¶  One star is "very good, worth choosing." Most apples are, and I am generous with this rating. But two stars is a step up, and I am judicious about handing those out. Of the thirty-nine varieties I sampled for the first time in 2023, eight earn the double star.

2023 was a banner year for this blog. Apple reviews are the heart of this project, and I was able to publish 39 of them.  ¶  That is more than any year except for the first two: 2008 (44) and 2009 (41).  ¶  Having so many apples challenges my practice of rating them once a year according to my qualitative system of one to three stars .

Karim Habibi strides through his seedling orchard like a god, casually dispensing death.  ¶  This is the part of Keeper's Nursery where Karim plants seeds he hopes will grow into tasty new apple varieties.  ¶  Most of them don't make the cut. Off with their heads!