Redfield

This small, classically shaped apple has a deep red blush decorated with a rugged archipelago of russet and distinctive light lenticel dots. The peel has a satiny gloss.

My Redfield is moderately ribbed and has an open, and deep, calyx. It smells faintly of cinnamon, perhaps residue of actual cinnamon from baked goods in the farm shop where I bought the apple.

As you can see (as if the name were not enough of a clue), this is another red-fleshed apple, a hearty magenta color (at least close to the peel—on the outside of the inside, as it were). The cut flesh smells a little like sweet mown grass.

The flesh is acidic, but also sweet. It is fine-grained, dense, and unusually chewy.
Redfield isn’t juicy, but its acid-sugar balance is assertive. There is a nutty note and a little bitter flourish.

A race is on to breed a tasty, juicy, red-flesh apple. Redfield isn’t that, but I enjoy it and would include it in a tasting medley to hint a little at the range of taste, texture, and color that this fruit can span.

An apple like this adds color to jellies and ciders.

Redfield is the union of a Wolf River apple blossom and pollen from Malus niedzwetzkyana, the red-fleshed Asian crab that is probably an ancestor of all the modern red-flesh breeds.

It is a 1938 product of the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, New York. The race has been on for quite a while!