Sunday, January 22, 2017

The young Turk apples are aging well

I have been feasting this month on Pacific Rose, Opal, and Piñata apples.

These three millennial varieties bring something long absent to the table: flavor. They are part of the leading edge of what I hope will prove to be a long-term trend towards taste.

Don't get me wrong: You could always get flavorful varieties at orchards, if you know where to go. Here's what I mean in terms of supermarket apples (North America version).

50s, 60s: Any apple you like, as long as it's Delicious. The age of the Red and Golden Delicious duopoly, leavened perhaps by maverick Granny Smith and some regional favorites like Cortland and McIntosh.

70s, 80s: Enter Gala, Fuji, Braeburn and a few others. This cohort seems to have perfected apples that are hard, crisp, and very sweet. Flavor? Not so much, or at least, not so very different the one from the other.

I find the Braeburn generation repetitive and derivative of each other, circling tightly around the same center of gravity, but they are popular. Growers have taken to reintroducing them under new names periodically, such as Kiku, Joburn, and Mahana Red.

The Oughts: Now things get tasty. In order of seniority: Pacific Rose was patented in 1992 under the name Sciros, though it took a while to get to New England. The Rose bears some interesting if elusive tropical-fruit flavor notes.

A good Piñata (2000, Pinova) is similarly tropical, with distinctive honey, pineapple, and banana flavors.

Opal (2004, "UEB 3264/2") is, by a hair, the less sweet and more sophisticated of the three. This gem bears flavors of honey, vanilla, and spice.

Jazz (2003, Scifresh), arguably belongs to this group too. It somehow beat the older Pacific Rose into the wholesale markets here by half a decade.
None are American-bred varieties and all are still scarce here, though they seem to be more available every year.

This gang of fruit does not fall far from the tree in terms of hard, durable crunch and high sugar content. Where they differ from their forebears is by having distinctive tastes.

There are other flavorful newcomers, such as Junami, that I might have mentioned as well.

Sweetango

One moment does not make a trend, but we have since seen Sweetango, with unusual flavors that include malt, maple, honey, spice, and carrot.

Sweetango's exceptional and appealing texture is a further break with the Braeburn consensus. Where a Braeburn or Jazz can be jawbreaker hard, the flamboyant crunch of a Sweetango is more friable, like that of Honeycrisp or Mcintosh.

Other flavorful varieties that are even newer include Koru (clove!) and diminutive Rockit, both of which seem to be on a marketing trajectory to your supermarket someday.

Rockit

I am rooting for this flavor thing to continue.

Of course there are many tasty varieties that aren't on course to crack the wholesale ceiling. You can snag them at orchards and farmers markets in the fall.

In that context I feel compelled to name Topaz, the excellent and tart (though still plenty sweet) pollen parent of Opal. Wouldn't it be great if Granny had a kindred spirit in the pantheon of apples you could buy in supermarkets?

3 comments:

  1. Well, of course I disagree with you about Braeburn. Properly ripened, there are a lot of interesting flavors there, far more than Gala or Fuji. Fuji is the sugar bomb with no acidity that I never buy, and I'll buy Gala if the Braeburns look no good.

    Also, while I have never had a decent Red Delicious, Yellow Delicious have a wonderful aroma when properly ripened. Problem is, one almost never gets them properly ripened, as they are then quite prone to bruising in shipping and handling.

    The Opals always LOOK great at the store. Maybe I need to try them again, but I don't remember them being anything to write home about.

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    1. Whenever I write a comment on your blog I think about it for hours afterwards. (I think about a lot of other things, too--I do a lot of parallel processing). I was trying to understand how we seem to have rather differing views on a lot of apples. Looking again at your post, I think a lot of the flavors that you highlight are what I would call gentle or even sweet flavors--honey, vanilla, pineapple, maple. Spice is a little pricklier, and you do mention that. But I like an apple that, in Kevin Hauser's words, "bites back." Some of this is acidity (tartness), but some is also bitterness or astringency. Not to the extremes of a cider apple (though I've not had the opportunity to bite into something like a Foxwhelp or Oxford Black), but something that is not so gentle.

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    2. Mike, I don't think our tastes are quite that different, for all that you seem to have found depths in Braeburn that have so far eluded me.

      See, for instance, Topaz, which has a nice sharp briny bite. It deserves a place next to Granny Smith in the supermarket.

      The flavors that my millennial trio bring are indeed "light" (and they are still very sweet), but at least they are flavors. I hope that more and better will follow.

      PS Oxford Black is quite mild, Golden Delicious is underrated, and Opal, I must admit, is past its prime in January.

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