Adam's Apples

By Thanksgiving week, the trees are bare and most growers have packed it in. A few will be open until Christmas. Even though it is the end of November, there are good Macs, Macouns, and Empires in the supermarkets. By stocking up on some of the late varieties I can have varied choices through the end of the year.

This is an old Southern apple, reputed by some to have been Andrew Jackson's favorite. And it has a name like a medieval pestilence (or a second-tier superhero. ) But what can we say about the Black Twig in person? A medium-large apple, very firm in the hand, that has a patchy red blush over a green yellow skin. The apple is decorated with small lenticels that are light inside the blush and green elsewhere. Its calyx is closed, and my sample bears one scar from the July 2 hail storm. The unbroken fruit has a rich cider smell.

My photograph fails to do justice to this understated Vermeer of an apple, with its deep orange red blush peeping though a painterly coating of rusty brown. These russets are medium-small and well-formed with a hint of ribbing. The russet covers most of the skin, which is silvery green except for the blush. Large irregular lenticels are most prominent in the unblushed areas and match the skin. There are also smooth orange patches in the russet, though it's hard to say in which layer the source of that color lies. Click on the photo for a close-up.

No verbal airbrushing here. My descriptions of apple varieties include, to the best of my skill, an account of the fruits' cosmetic imperfections. I hope you are not put off by apple russet, or those little black speckles, or even the large dark indentations I've found on some varieties. I'm not. But I do wonder: What are they?

Gold Rush originated at the Purdue Horticulture Research Farm in West Lafayette, Indiana, where it was named "GoldRush" in honor of (1) its color, (2) a purported "rush" of flavor, and (3) some goofy marketing theory that says if you jam two words together and capitalize letters in the middle, more people will buy the apple. Sorry guys, but nobody calls it that, and it is a tribute to the actual qualities of this variety, not your marketing acumen, that people like it enough to reinterpret the name back into English. Gold Rush is a medium-sized ribbed apple with waxy yellow skin (tinged with green) flecked with dark lenticels. A light bronze blush shows where the sun has been.

The web logs for this site (no personal data) show that yesterday a vistor using a French internet-service provider requested a translation of my Melrouge review via Google Translate, an automated online translator. This is another freebie from Google, and you do get what you pay for. There is something charming about reading one's prose rendered in French. At least, if one doesn't look too closely. See for yourself. To get some idea of the quality of this translation, I fed it backwards through Google Translate, French to English.

This may be a Golden Russet, as advertised when I bought it. Or it may be something else. (Any theories, anyone?) In any case it is not a representative sample, as I later discovered when I bought a second batch of Golden Russet apples from Red Apple Farm in Phillipston. That story is here and the true Golden Russet review is here. My original review follows. This russet variety runs medium-small, a bit large for this kind of apple. Patches of rusty-brown russet sit atop the Golden Russet's spring-green skin, small continents and archipelagos of vegetation upon some fantastic planetoid. The russetting does not cover everything but is present in the brown lenticels.

What is the name of this apple? Red Apple Farm sold it to me at Lexington's farmers market under the name "Yellow Newton Pippin." Wikipedia tells us, "Green and yellow varieties are sometimes distinguished but it is not clear that they are in fact distinct cultivars," and lists it as the Newtown Pippin (and a parent of Gingergold ). As "Albemarle Pippin" Vintage Virginia calls it "the most famous of Virginia apples" and dates it back to 1700.

This is the time of year I find myself asking, Who has good Macouns? The season for them is quite over and they are not great keepers generally, but if properly stored they can be very good. So at farm stands and supermarkets I buy them in small quantities, to avoid paying for a week's supply of mushy apples.

Phil's, in hilly Harvard Massachusetts ( map ), is one of my favorite places for unpasteurized cider. Just some apple trees on a hillside, and a shed with a cider press, Phil's is the anti - Shelburne Farm (or Honey Pot Hill, or other orchard that sweetens its offerings with hay rides, a moon bounce, a corn maze, donuts, or Morris dancers). No one was home when I stopped by midweek, but the orchard was open for business on the honor system. The bare-bones approach is appealing and means that on sunny October weekends a trip to Phil's will dodge the mobs of families. Kids who do come by on weekends can help operate the cider press, which is not motorized.

A famous cooking apple, sometimes called "Northern Pie," this heirloom is also great for eating and is still enjoyed across the Northeast. Northern Spy is large, very ribbed, and a little gnarly. A streaky red blush mostly covers yellow-green (actually more yellow than green). My example has a small patch of tiny black russet spots, a wen-like extrudence, and numerous small dents and bruises. Most of these are probably from my own ham-handling, but they suggest a sensitive vulnerability.

A famous, fabled apple that many feel is simply the best. And, yes, it is fabulous.  ¶  Cox's Orange Pippin runs medium to medium-large and is round, oblate, and ribbed. The blush is indeed an orange-red, sometimes uneven, over yellow green and with considerable russetting. Brown lenticels freckle the whole surface, which is matte, not glossy. Cox's sits firm in the hand and smells slightly mossy or grassy.

On Halloween I pedaled out to Littleton for another visit to Nagog Hill Farm. There were no apples left on the trees. Compare the photo at right to the one I took back in July (as told here ): All in all two bookends to the season.

Jonathan + Golden Delicious = Jonagold (at least sometimes, see below). The fruit is is medium large, round and regular with slight ribbing. Its skin is a light yellow-green (not gold) spotted with darker green lenticels. An orangish-red blush, streaky in places, covers about half the surface; there the lenticels appear light tan. The unbroken apple smells mellow and sweet, very like I remember a Golden Delicious.

Heading west from Boston, apple country begins in the Town of Stow, blessed with many orchards. A cheerful example is Shelburne Farm, north of the center of town on the road to West Acton. Shelburne is one of those pick-your-own places that caters to families. Besides the basic picking experience, there is a hay ride, ponies, a moon bounce, kettle corn, cheddar cheese, and such warm goodies as apple crisp, mulled cider, apple turnovers, and cider donuts. (The farm offers still other ancillary blandishments in season and can frankly be quite a mob scene on weekends. They even had a Morris dancing team out this year.)

Various sources date Rhode Island Greening to 1650, making it one of the oldest New England varieties still enjoyed today. This fruit is generally medium-sized, though my test apple is a little bigger than that. It is lopsided, ribbed, and a yellow-green with darker green blotches. A light orange-red blush covers perhaps a quarter of its skin, which has large brown lenticels, also similar brown russet spots radiating from the base. ( Other photographs of the Greening show light lenticels, so perhaps the brown I observed is really more russetting, in this case of the fruit's pores.)