Chieftain *

A lively little apple that tastes like melon. What's nicer than that?

Small Chieftain's red blush is deep and a little dull, more orange than purple. The apple is yellow where shadows have blocked the blush-making sun. These are a little oblate and essentially not ribbed.

Chieftain's lenticel dots range from tiny and easy to miss to the large stretched-out markings visible near the top of the apple in my photo. Both of my samples have patches of flyspeck.

This variety's yielding flesh has strong cantaloupe flavors, with a dash of something citric. Think melon with lemon. The off-white fine-grained matter of this variety might be crisper at peak.

The apple is well balanced and leaves a clean finish in its wake.

Chieftain is a Jonathan x Delicious cross, bred a hundred years ago by none other than Spencer Beach, at the Iowa Experimental Station.

However, Chieftain was not introduced commercially until the 1960s.

Links:

• Horticulturalist Spencer Beach created Chieftain after editing the then-encyclopedic Apples of New York.
• Jonathan
• Delicious
• Chieftain described by Orange Pippin, Fruit Maven, Iowa, and Salt Spring.