4 ms·

This is the same story for every new variety of apple. It becomes popular because of its positive characteristics (sweetness, tanginess, juicyness, crispness),

This is the same story for every new variety of apple. It becomes popular because of its positive characteristics (sweetness, tanginess, juicyness, crispness), but then slowly over time it gets cultivated for mass market appeal (uniform color, shape, shelf life) and the variety loses what made it good. The best apple variety is generally the new one. The market is strewn with the discarded remains of formerly good apples like Fuji and Gala.

mikepurvis 2y ago
My preferred apple is Mutsu, available from a few growers in the late season at my southern Ontario farmers market. According to Wikipedia it's been around since 1949, but perhaps it simply never got popular enough to face these pressures— either way, I find it consistently to be in the right place for me as far as a balance of sweet, tangy, and crispy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutsu_(apple) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutsu_(apple)
- thomk 2y ago
  Any idea where those could be located on the us side of the border in Detroit?
  - fn-mote 2y ago
    Farmer’s market. Grocery store that isn’t a big chain. They’re here.
  - mikepurvis 2y ago
    Given that it's a Japanese cultivar, I assume they're all over the place, you just have find a market where someone growing them has them for sale.
  - Jgrubb 2y ago
    Aka “crispin” if that helps. Every apple farmer around here in NW NJ grows them, never seen them in a store. Also my favorite.
- justinfrankel 2y ago
  +1 here -- Mutsu are fantastic, readily available at NYC greenmarkets in the fall and into the winter, though there are pretty large differences in flavor and texture between various orchards too. Samascot is my fav.
cmiller1 2y ago
Or the old one, find a local orchard that sells heirloom apples! Get some Cox's Orange Pippin or some Northern Spy or some Ashmead's Kernel.
- jessekv 2y ago
  I second the cox's. This harvest I bought several of each variety in the shop and cox's was my favorite by a mile.
  - notanote 2y ago
    Same here. I can imagine growers don’t like them as much though, despite the lack of patents and trademarks. In Europe they were abundant and amazing quality last year, lasting into February. This harvest their flavour wasn’t there, many were mealy, and they were unavailable within a month. Their worst year as far as I can remember.
  - quercusa 2y ago
    Be on the lookout for Esopus Spitzenburg (maybe only in the US). It's a really tasty apple.
  - pvaldes 2y ago
    Cox is a very good apple that is infamously prone to pick every apple disease known. Golden Delicious has the same problem, good flavor, disappointing as tree without using chemicals. Rubinette is a medium sized yellow apple, streaked in reddish brown. Not particularly eye-catching and also prone to fungal diseases. But Rubinette has a secret, is a seedling of Cox x Golden delicious, and its flavor is fantastic. Modern apples with not so sophisticated flavor but better resistance can be much more satisfactory.
- jghn 2y ago
  I found the Westfield Seek-No-Further [1] this year and it's become my new favorite. [1] https://www.scottfarmvermont.com/westfield-seeknofurther https://www.scottfarmvermont.com/westfield-seeknofurther
- 2y ago
grogenaut 2y ago
This is a thing I love about living in WA, I get the apples a few years before everyone else. Lets me send them to friends across the US before they hit their supermarkets. And yes really the interesting thing is they're different and new. Tho I do really like cosmics. Especially if you dry them in a food dehydrator and then powder them into whipped cream. Same deal with cherries.
- binarymax 2y ago
  Same with Western NY - proximity to Cornell’s apple research and lots of orchards is really great. If you’re an apple fanatic WA and WNY are the places to be.
ranger207 2y ago
I wonder what the incentives are that make mass market qualities more attractive to growers than what consumers want. Like, I can imagine a sorta-demand curve with "sweetness etc" to "uniform color etc" along the x axis and "clearing price" or something on the y axis, and I really wonder if the most efficient price is really so far to the mass market appeal side of the curve. Or to put it another way, why can't they just grow things people want?
- bradleyjg 2y ago
  What people want when you sit them down and have them try apples side by side is different from what they want when they are in a supermarket, tired from working all day, and starring out at a sea of apples and not quite remembering which one it was they liked.
- ip26 2y ago
  The clearing price probably actually rises with improved color and shape, and the overhead declines with greater shelf stability. It’s not until years later that consumers slowly realize the texture and taste have gone downhill (as result of these developments) that clearing price begins to decline. So the market has a lag in response; it resembles a high value brand being sucked dry.
- djur 2y ago
  What people want, judging by their market behavior, is reliability. A lot of the best-tasting apples are inconsistent in quality, ship or store poorly, or have a short growing season. I love eating fresh heirloom apples, but Honeycrisps are 10% great, 80% good, and 10% disappointing, which I prefer to 30% good, 30% disappointing, and 40% unavailable.
  - shermantanktop 2y ago
    The idea of a year-round fruit crop is a modern supermarket creation. Most food is seasonal. If a consumer are unaware of its seasonality, that’s because someone is working hard to hide that fact. I try to enjoy asparagus when it is in season, new potatoes when they are in season, etc. Just because some crops are bred for months and months of storage doesn’t mean they actually taste great.
lamp_book 2y ago
Enshitification. I’ve been buying honeycrisp for a while and noticed more mushiness and flat flavor recently but I didn’t realize there was a whole apple-buying meta to keep up with if you don’t want to buy garbage fruit. Edit: All the honeycrisp in my area right now are oversized. I’m guessing because of a supplier change due to the season change?
- pvaldes 2y ago
  Oversized and without flavor? Watson, I think that we have another case of assassination by Giberellins here.

mikepurvis 2y ago

My preferred apple is Mutsu, available from a few growers in the late season at my southern Ontario farmers market. According to Wikipedia it's been around since 1949, but perhaps it simply never got popular enough to face these pressures— either way, I find it consistently to be in the right place for me as far as a balance of sweet, tangy, and crispy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutsu_(apple) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutsu_(apple)

thomk 2y ago
Any idea where those could be located on the us side of the border in Detroit?
- fn-mote 2y ago
  Farmer’s market. Grocery store that isn’t a big chain. They’re here.
- mikepurvis 2y ago
  Given that it's a Japanese cultivar, I assume they're all over the place, you just have find a market where someone growing them has them for sale.
- Jgrubb 2y ago
  Aka “crispin” if that helps. Every apple farmer around here in NW NJ grows them, never seen them in a store. Also my favorite.
justinfrankel 2y ago
+1 here -- Mutsu are fantastic, readily available at NYC greenmarkets in the fall and into the winter, though there are pretty large differences in flavor and texture between various orchards too. Samascot is my fav.

cmiller1 2y ago

Or the old one, find a local orchard that sells heirloom apples! Get some Cox's Orange Pippin or some Northern Spy or some Ashmead's Kernel.

jessekv 2y ago
I second the cox's. This harvest I bought several of each variety in the shop and cox's was my favorite by a mile.
- notanote 2y ago
  Same here. I can imagine growers don’t like them as much though, despite the lack of patents and trademarks. In Europe they were abundant and amazing quality last year, lasting into February. This harvest their flavour wasn’t there, many were mealy, and they were unavailable within a month. Their worst year as far as I can remember.
- quercusa 2y ago
  Be on the lookout for Esopus Spitzenburg (maybe only in the US). It's a really tasty apple.
- pvaldes 2y ago
  Cox is a very good apple that is infamously prone to pick every apple disease known. Golden Delicious has the same problem, good flavor, disappointing as tree without using chemicals. Rubinette is a medium sized yellow apple, streaked in reddish brown. Not particularly eye-catching and also prone to fungal diseases. But Rubinette has a secret, is a seedling of Cox x Golden delicious, and its flavor is fantastic. Modern apples with not so sophisticated flavor but better resistance can be much more satisfactory.
jghn 2y ago
I found the Westfield Seek-No-Further [1] this year and it's become my new favorite. [1] https://www.scottfarmvermont.com/westfield-seeknofurther https://www.scottfarmvermont.com/westfield-seeknofurther
2y ago

grogenaut 2y ago

This is a thing I love about living in WA, I get the apples a few years before everyone else. Lets me send them to friends across the US before they hit their supermarkets. And yes really the interesting thing is they're different and new. Tho I do really like cosmics. Especially if you dry them in a food dehydrator and then powder them into whipped cream. Same deal with cherries.

binarymax 2y ago
Same with Western NY - proximity to Cornell’s apple research and lots of orchards is really great. If you’re an apple fanatic WA and WNY are the places to be.

ranger207 2y ago

I wonder what the incentives are that make mass market qualities more attractive to growers than what consumers want. Like, I can imagine a sorta-demand curve with "sweetness etc" to "uniform color etc" along the x axis and "clearing price" or something on the y axis, and I really wonder if the most efficient price is really so far to the mass market appeal side of the curve. Or to put it another way, why can't they just grow things people want?

bradleyjg 2y ago
What people want when you sit them down and have them try apples side by side is different from what they want when they are in a supermarket, tired from working all day, and starring out at a sea of apples and not quite remembering which one it was they liked.
ip26 2y ago
The clearing price probably actually rises with improved color and shape, and the overhead declines with greater shelf stability. It’s not until years later that consumers slowly realize the texture and taste have gone downhill (as result of these developments) that clearing price begins to decline. So the market has a lag in response; it resembles a high value brand being sucked dry.
djur 2y ago
What people want, judging by their market behavior, is reliability. A lot of the best-tasting apples are inconsistent in quality, ship or store poorly, or have a short growing season. I love eating fresh heirloom apples, but Honeycrisps are 10% great, 80% good, and 10% disappointing, which I prefer to 30% good, 30% disappointing, and 40% unavailable.
- shermantanktop 2y ago
  The idea of a year-round fruit crop is a modern supermarket creation. Most food is seasonal. If a consumer are unaware of its seasonality, that’s because someone is working hard to hide that fact. I try to enjoy asparagus when it is in season, new potatoes when they are in season, etc. Just because some crops are bred for months and months of storage doesn’t mean they actually taste great.

lamp_book 2y ago

Enshitification. I’ve been buying honeycrisp for a while and noticed more mushiness and flat flavor recently but I didn’t realize there was a whole apple-buying meta to keep up with if you don’t want to buy garbage fruit. Edit: All the honeycrisp in my area right now are oversized. I’m guessing because of a supplier change due to the season change?

pvaldes 2y ago
Oversized and without flavor? Watson, I think that we have another case of assassination by Giberellins here.