Adam's Apples

Macoun King David Macoun , the queen of vinous apples, is just not 100% if grown in Virginia. King David , apple of the South, does not reach its peak here in New England. I shall miss Macoun. I am not going anywhere. But the climate is. The Nature Conservancy finds that the climate in neighboring Vermont is likely to " become like that of southern Virginia ." The good news, I guess, is that Virginia boasts some great apples. They just aren't the ones that do well up here, for the most part. The ones linked intimately with our sense of place. The ones we love. Sure, people grow northern apple...

There is no way this can be very good, and I almost shied away out of respect for one of my favorite apples, Macoun . But curiosity, and respect for yours, led me to buy two of these at a farm stand in Bolton on August 13.

Little Wickson catches the breeze with a particularly magnificent Macoun .

LOVE THE ONES YOU'RE WITH Lemonade , above, is a right good apple, well balanced and eminently worth choosing . But the main reason I was glad to see this variety last month is geographic. My Lemonades grew in New Zealand and were picked in the spring. They are half a year fresher than the other apples in stores today. And, you can taste it.

Left to right: Reine de Reinettes, Ashmead's Kernel, Macoun, Wickson, Cox's Orange Pippin The gang's all here. All 5 of the apples I've rated as "exceptional, worth a quest"—3 of 3 possible stars—together in one place.

Today's head-to-head compares two apples, one well-established and the other very new, from one of the oldest large-scale apple-breeding program in the Americas.

Notwithstanding my cheerful posts about the many apples you can still buy in January : In any given year there will be some varieties that are not available. Alas. This year, for instance, Macoun is scarce and often disappointing if available. These grow in the Northeast, which had an uneven harvest this fall. Last year this great apple was good to eat (and available) through late March.

Today I've got two great apples, Macoun and Cox's Orange Pippin , that have probably been ripening on the tree too long. Both of these were picked late. L to R: Cox's Orange Pippin, Macoun. I want to see what that is like.

On the small side, with some light hazy bloom, ribbed, freckled, gorgeous. It's still a wee early for Macoun but you know what? It's still great.

Macoun in autumn Even in a good year, the delightful Macoun cannot be had for love or money after the end of March. Yet I am eating one today at the tail end of May. It's a wonderful apple in inferior shape, and eating one today is both rewarding and disappointing. Nonetheless I eat for pleasure and by choice, not from obligation or loyalty.

A few years ago I received as a gift a bottle of Bordeaux with a prestigious label. I do not know a lot about wine, and I waited to drink it with a knowledgeable friend. The year was not a distinguished vintage and the wine was well past the nominal drink-by date, to the point where we did not even know if it would be drinkable. But we opened it and it was. It had a thin, balanced quality and was quite good. My friend, a Bordeaux aficionado, pronounced it a fine, elegant old wine and we both enjoyed the bottle. I was reminded of this today when I ate the last Macoun of the year. Unusual weather led to a small crop and this variety, which last year was available though mid-March in supermarkets, had petered out by the end of December. The quality of these dregs was not first rate, either, reflecting probably how they had been handled and stored since the harvest in September or early October. Despite that, I enjoyed these apples and wis...

In September Macoun is an outright marvel, crisp and satisfying, bursting with juice and flavor that are vinous and complex. It is pretty wonderful in mid-winter too, when the last are trundled out from their refrigerated controlled-atmosphere vaults. Too fragile to cut it as a year-round industrial apple , Macoun is nonetheless popular enough to sell well past the season's end. To my very great pleasure. Most years I bid bid a wistful goodby to Macoun in the first half of February, but this year a local Whole Foods has sold these, incredibly, into March. (Credit where credit is due: it can only encourage them.)

Yesterday I pedaled out to Nagog Hill Orchard in Littleton. This is an agreeably bare-bones pick-your-own place, but of course you can buy by the pound and they have a lot of trees and varieties from which to chose. There's not a lot of room in my bike bag and I only bought one, a Macoun. The woman behind the table helpfully offered a paper towel to protect the apple, a nice thing to do because Macouns bruise easily.

I put this special review into storage back in October. Today we'll compare two of the Fall's most popular varieties, McIntosh (L) and Macoun (R).

Our winter beauty is an exceptionally dark Macoun.

This is the time of year I find myself asking, Who has good Macouns? The season for them is quite over and they are not great keepers generally, but if properly stored they can be very good. So at farm stands and supermarkets I buy them in small quantities, to avoid paying for a week's supply of mushy apples.

I waited—oh how I waited—when the first Macoun and McIntosh apples first appeared at the market in late summer. I did not review these New England beauties then because the extra-tart, extra-acidic, not-quite-ripe early apples would not have been representative. You see, I eat to serve. Instead I waited until maturity, tasting McIntosh at the very end of September and Macoun a week or so later.

Ah, Macoun, lady fair! If McIntosh is the king of the New England apples, then Macoun, with its distinctive bouquet, is surely queen.  ¶  Macoun (pronounced "Ma-cow-an") is medium to medium-large and sports a red blush that runs from deep and purplish to streaky over bright green, freckled with small light tan lenticels. The fruit is ribbed—I've had three-lobed Macouns that boasted a triangular horizontal cross-section—but with considerable variation. The stem is short, which poses some problems for growers.