Finkenwerder Herbstprinz

O Prince of autumn! Finkenwerder has a striped red blush that reads as orange over the green-tinted yellow peel of this apple. ¶ 

It is lightly ribbed and tapered, though my sample is not as elongated as the one hanging from a branch in today's photo. ¶ 

Small lenticel dots match the peel, but many are filled in with grey. For some reason that is the most common on the unblushed side.

Zoom the photo to see how some of the lenticels are like little bullseyes, russet brown with a dark center, while others are not.

Mine is large and firm, and has a faint but promising sweet aroma.

Into the fruit

Biting in, snow-white fine-grained flesh is both tender and dense. The sweet-tart balance of this one is very good, with cane sugar, floral (lilac?) and cream-soda notes. It's lively and spicy.

This apple has a tiny bit of watercore in the calyx end, but it is confined to a small area and I base my report on the untouched flesh. (It's not that the watercore is unpleasant, but it does obscure the flavors.)

There's a persistent sweet finish.

The net effect is of a satisfying and harmonious collection of tastes.

Rorschach apple?

There is a good deal online about this apple, and sources all cite the island or peninsula of Finkenwerder in the Elbe river (near Hamburg) as place of origin, circa 1880. 

Several suggest that the Herbstprinze ("autumn prince") improves with months of storage, and several also say that early October is too early to pick this apple. (For the record mine, picked then, did not strike me as unripe.)

But the characterizations of flavor, though all laudatory, differed. It's acid, it's sweet; it's sharp. It seems to be an all-purpose apple, variously cited for eating, cooking, and/or cider. Some interesting accounts:

• Slow food foundation
• Grower's comments, shared at Orange Pippin

Also

• Washington State University
• National Fruit Collection (UK)
• Pomiferoous