Redfree

VERY GOOD, SOMETIMES: 

It's been nearly 16 years since I sampled Redfree, a modern disease-resistant breed that is a candidate for home gardeners and organic orchards. ¶ 

I learned that there is some variability in this summer variety. ¶ 

The above apple grew at an organic farm (Hutchins, in Concord, Massachusetts) about week ago (when I tasted it). These apples are different enough from my 2009 samples to justify a second bite.

My samples are small (though other sizes are possible) and flattened at top and bottom, slightly ribbed, and wearing a deep, saturated red blush over a pale green-tinged yellow.

The peal is glossy. The blush is a rather pure red that leans neither purple nor orange.

As is so often the case, the blush is not really uniform even in the most saturated area, which includes darker vertical streaks.

The blush is thinner and yellower in places, and if you look closely you can make out tiny light lenticel dots.

Crisp and good

These have a nice snappy crunch when fresh of the tree, also well balanced flavors, vinous with generic berries and a hint of something creamy like vanilla (but not really there). 

The effect is smooth, pleasant, and easy to eat.

Another sample had a faint anise note that transitioned to cherry as I ate the apple.

Another Redfree, also from Hutchins but purchased just a few days later at the Belmont farmers market, had a fainter cherry note as well.  Yet another, though still flavorful (though without the cherry), had a softer crunch.

Also from Hutchins Farm, a few days later: Not as crisp.

I am not sure why, but the medium and large Redfrees were just not as crisp as the small ones that looked like the one in my first photo above.

Possibly the size thing is a coincidence, but there was variability in quality for this apple, at least for texture, even from the same farm on the same day.

There seem to be four Redfree flavor touch points, varying in presentation and intensity:

• vinousness
• generic berries
• creaminess
• sometimes, cherry

A range of Redfree

I tried Redfree in September of 2009. They were good, but I concluded that there were more-tempting choices that time of year.

Those had probably been off the tree for more than a week. Redfree is reputedly a good keeper (which is not typical of summer varieties) but perhaps that time sitting around after picking, and storage quality, was a factor.

On August 22 I found them at Cider Hill Farm and decide I was due for a retaste.

Cider Hill's Redfree

These were better than the 2009 samples, if not as crisp as the better ones from Hutchins. The vanilla-esque creaminess I note in other examples expressed itself here as coconut.

Other flavor differences include more or less vinousness and more or less berries, and other flavors like cherry.

Visual variation

Some Redfree have more or less blush and more or less prominent lenticel dots.

2009

Compared to the small red fruit pictured in my first photograph, 2009 looks like a different apple entirely.

Indeed, these apples are all a little different, but together, in appearance and flavor, comprise a coherent continuum that is not very broad.

Redfree is a modern PRI Co-op apple named for its color and (relative) freedom from disease.

Pomiferous has an unsourced account of its parentage. Out on a Limb seems to like them.

Bookkeeping

I aspire to showcase the best examples of each apple at peak. That's why  this report replaces an older one as my "official" Redfree tasting.

I am retaining the 2009 review, which bears some interesting comments from readers.