Adam's Apples

  Researchers tracking the evolution of apples over the years have discovered that modern-day varieties are 3.6 times heavier, about half as acidic, and far less bitter than the wild ancestral species (much like crab apples) from which modern apples are derived. I was going to put on my science reporter hat and describe this research, from scientists at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.

Do you miss the harvest? Have some reading. 

Stormalong, the Massachusetts cider maker, names each in its Rare Apple Series after one of the apples used to make the drink. My idea to photograph the named apple with the cider is more playful than anything else, especially since most of these are blends of perhaps a half dozen different varieties. Today's beverage, however, is a single varietal, one hundred percent Stayman Winesap . And that is a Stayman posing with the family group.  Let's quaff.

Genetic analyses get cheaper and more powerful every year, busting myths and providing information about the lineage of apple cultivars. Honeycrisp , to cite a notorious example, is not a Macoun x Honeygold cross, as breeding records from the 1960s suggested. It is rather Keepsake x MN1627 (the latter an uncommercialized variety that has not survived).

Apple trees bask in unseasonably warm February sun at Hutchins Farm in Concord, Massachusetts, earlier today.

The depth of my ignorance about hard cider is as great as my astonishment when I learned that the magnificent Ashmead's Kernel is used to make something to drink. Ashmead's is a superb and complex desert apple eaten out of hand, a treat of first rank. Like most other variety-named ciders from Stormalong, this one is a blend. 

Ice and snow here, a good time to catch up on some reading.