School for apples: ; Throw away that Red Delicious and enjoy a real apple or two

The Charleston Gazette (Charleston, WV)

November 12, 2000 | Bob Schwarz

bobschwarz@wvgazette.com

IT'S September and you bite into a gigantic shiny red apple you just bought at the supermarket. It's sweet, but it's mushy. You take another bite, spit out the mush, and toss the apple out. You have just rejected an 11-month-old Red Delicious apple.

It happens a lot.

Where have all the great apples of yesteryear gone?

Some of the great ones have just about vanished, grown only by hobbyists in scattered back yards. Some of the fabled apples of yore weren't so great to begin with.

Not so fast with the tears, says Barbara Scott of Summit Point Raceway Orchards, one of two West Virginia specialty growers who grow apples with superior crispness and taste.

Take the crisp, juicy, somewhat tart Nittany, one of nine apples Scott and husband William grow on their easy-to-manage dwarf trees, located in the prime apple-growing country of the Shenandoah Valley.

The Scotts keep their apples in atmospherically controlled storage, and sell their apples through gift packs - call (800) 927- 7531 or visit online www.summitpointorchards.com - and through supermarkets in and around Washington, D.C. Last year, Nittany and Mountaineer apples - the Mountaineer is a cousin of the York - came to some area Kroger stores and they have recently arrived again.

At Capitol Market in Charleston, Produce Junction's John Craddock says the Nittany, York, Stayman and Golden Delicious sell best among the 24 varieties he has, all from Morgan Orchard, which grows 50 varieties of apples on 100 Monroe County acres. Red Delicious is the worst seller, ahead of only the Jonathan.

Of the best sellers, only the tallish Golden is a pretty apple, though ones grown in rainy climates develop dark dots called freckles, and wavy lines called russetting. Stayman has that traditional round apple shape, but splashed with green and prone to cracking. The Nittany is a tall red apple splashed yellow, and so lopsided it can't stand up. The York is a squat, wobbly red apple with thin yellow striping.

(Strangely enough, the Red Delicious had a very unappealing, unappley look until Washington promoters decided round was no longer right and stripes were no longer in for apples.)

There are two theories on the Red Delicious. Maybe it was never good. Maybe the goodness was lost as growers kept looking for better- looking genetic variations.

"Nobody should feel sorry for us - we did this to ourselves," Washington State apple grower Doyle Fleming, who has been gradually switching his trees from Red Delicious to new varieties like Cameo, told The New York Times in a recent article.

"For almost 50 years, we've been cramming down the consumer's throat a red apple with ever-thicker skin, sometimes mushy, sometimes very good if done right, but a product that was bred for color and size and not for taste."

Classic apples

Apple lovers should mourn the winter of 1933-34, when a late- winter freeze sent temperatures to minus 40 in the orchards of central New York state, where the Baldwin apple reigned supreme. The sap had already risen in the trees, and the Baldwin trees froze and burst.

Baldwins never recovered as a commercial apple, though they lingered in the market into the 1950s, said Tom Burford, who, until he retired, raised 400 varieties of apples at his nursery in Monroe, Va.

The freeze put a scare into growers, who switched to McIntosh, another fine apple when grown in the North.

Burford grows the Baldwin, one of 50 varieties he shipped on demand from his nursery to backyard growers. (The others had to be ordered far in advance.) At a taste test Burford ran a few years back at the Virginia State Arboretum near Winchester, the Baldwin placed No. 1. When Burford guided people through his nursery, he had to always watch the Baldwin trees so visitors didn't eat them clean.

"It's an American classic," said Burford, now a consultant to apple and peach growers. "People will always grow it."

McIntosh now has become a niche apple, threatened by the Fuji, Braeburn and Gala, the trio which broke the monoculture of Washington-grown Red Delicious, Burford said.

Consumers were at first skeptical of the new varieties, he said. "They would take them home and say, 'This is not too bad.'" Then they'd go back to the supermarket and say, "These are pretty good, but what else have you got?"

And so the apple market has opened back up and consumers are again wanting some tartness and taste in their apples. Strong new entrants include the Nittany, once considered a processing apple because of its bicolor appearance.

"Ah, yes, the Nittany. It's too bad the commonwealth of Pennsylvania doesn't get busy and really promote it," Burford said. "The Nittany is one of those varieties that no one really doesn't like. It's sort of like the person who everyone in town likes."

Losing ground

At 65, Burford has trimmed his workday from 18 hours to 12 hours, but still freezes 100 quarts of that West Virginia native, Grimes Golden, a great cooking apple which holds its shape in cooking and has, he says, the perfect combination of sugar, acid and tannin. "I just take them out and cook them up in a fry pan with nothing on them. Urbanite friends come, eat them up, and say, 'Could you fix another pan?'"

Some of the older apples will continue to lose ground. The Stayman, once considered the ultimate apple in the mid-Atlantic states, occupies an ever-smaller place in the marketplace. It yields grudgingly, and the fruit often cracks. It is at its best only from mid-October to Dec. 1. Worst of all, a red Winesap, bland and mealy, has displaced the tart and crisp Stayman in supermarkets, confusing the issue.

So toss away the Red Delicious, a heavily promoted apple that will out-yield all others, and you can find just as good eating as your great-grandparents. Maybe a whole lot better, given improvements in storage technology.

Still, apple lovers disregard the calendar at their own peril. The season of good eating begins in mid-August, peaks in October and slowly goes downhill from there. "Every apple has its perfect moment," Burford says.

In old-fashioned cold storage, the Golden Delicious wrinkles, but retains its flavor into March, when the flesh gets softer, but not mushy. In atmospherically controlled storage, Goldens go in green and come out green, which means they have to ripen at room temperature to develop aroma and sweetness.

Atmospherically controlled storage prolongs the season of good eating, but Nittanies and Yorks struggle to stay at their best by March, when Nittany starts to break down and Yorks become overly sweet. Pink Ladies, a new crisp and juicy keeper, last longer.

Two steps forward, one back

Pity the poor Red Delicious, trying to stretch the season from harvest to harvest.

Addie Morgan, who with husband Marshall Ritter runs Morgan Orchard, likes the Empire, a Red Delicious-McIntosh cross, the new Sundowner, and the Honeycrisp, a Minnesota apple that she is just getting started with.

In the trade publications, the financially troubled Washington growers beat their chests and say they have done it to themselves by going overboard on making the Red Delicious as pretty as possible.