Adam's Apples

"Is that a really tiny apple or a really big cherry?"—my daughter's reaction to Wickson, which is either a small apple or a large crab.  ¶  With its bright saturated red blush (over a yellow not unlike that of a Rainier cherry ), round, slightly elongated shape, and long stem, this small apple bears more than a passing resemblance to that fruit. Its skin is glossy and the small fruit is firm.  ¶  Wickson has coarse light-yellow flesh that is juicy and wonderfully crisp. It is well-balanced, tartness predominating but tempered by sugar, and with distinct malt-sugar notes. This is not a flavor I have encountered in any other apple and I wonder what kind of cider these would produce. In any case they make an excellent snack, full of snap and spice —but each is just a few bites. I found myself gnawing every eatable scrap of these little gems. Trees of Antiquity says ...

Ida fire-engine Red is decorated with light yellow-green lenticels of varying size. The arresting blush covers the entire fruit, through it grows streaky around the base and my sample has russet in the stem well. Ida is a large medium fruit, globular with just a little ribbing. Unbroken she is firm in my hand.

J.R.R. Tolkien's elves divided the year into six seasons, not four. Between autumn and winter came fading, an ebb in the tide of nature.  ¶  Halfway between the cross-quarter day of Samhain (Halloween) and Yule, the trees at Nagog Hill Orchard stand bleak and bare under a gray November sky, so very different than that of early fall.

Slow Food USA identifies 129 heirloom apple varieties for its Ark of Taste, from American Beauty (reviewed here ) to Yeats. This is an interesting catalog, including may photos, and I should like to taste every one of them. Unfortunately, there are detailed descriptions of only a few of the selected varieties (seven at this writing), and no simple way to find them! Until now, that is. Links below: Capitol Reef Granite Beauty Harrison Cider Hauer Pippin Newtown Pippin Gravenstein Sierra Beauty To make matters more confusing, not all of these seven are on the list of 129. Slow Food USA, like its international counterpart, promotes local food, biodiversity, and appreciation of good things to eat.

If your idea of a russet apple is small and round, meet Hudson's Golden Gem. These conical apples are medium to medium-large and obviously ribbed. The russetting, like that of other varieties, is a treat to look at: rusty, toasty brown and not entirely opaque, creating subtly shifting colors wonderfully variegated.

On the small side of medium, this cheerful yellow variety recalls both Red and Golden Delicious. Coville has the exaggerated ribbed and tapered profile of the former and the color and dark lenticels of the latter, from which it surely must be descended. Some have a small slight blush, rosy orange. At the base a circle of bumps surrounds an open calyx. These bruise easily and have a lush sweet aroma.

A fellow apple fanatic emailed me recently about a rot- and pest-resistant apple that will stay crisp and fresh for two weeks at room temperature. Breeding will out, and the new variety has great genes, according to its patent. Horticulturalists tout the fruit's green potential to save growers money while avoiding the need for pesticides and energy-intensive storage. But (and excuse me for asking this)  how does it taste?