Adam's Apples

David D'Angelo of Hawk Farm in Maine gave me a few of these earlier this year, the best examples I have had yet. I'm not replacing my 2010 tasting notes for Black Oxford, but here is a post script. These were nice and dark, a deep red with both purple and mahogany overtones. Many light lenticels of varying sizes are sprinkled across the dark like stars in the night sky. Biting in shows dense white flesh with streaks of red from the richly colored peel.

Not the shoe and not the fabric, today's fruit is named for its unusual deep color and a county in western Maine. It is small and quite dark, spattered with rust-colored lenticels like some polished victorian curio of exotic hardwood or stone. The blush is a deep red with purple overtones, almost mahogany, sometimes described as having a blackish bloom. The apple is slightly ribbed and classically shaped, round to conical. Its unbroken peel has a faint grassy smell.