Ate red delicious from this area that were amazing. Red delicious from the store are terrible tasting in my opinion. Red delicious have a tarnished reputation because of how and where they are grown. Have you ever had the black diamond apple? I have read reports there is none better. "The black diamond apple variant is one of the sweetest apples because of its very high natural glucose content. It also has thicker skin giving off a waxier shine to its appearance and also a crunchier bite.
This apple hybrid is not one of the many apple variants that most farmers would produce because of its very particular growing conditions. The very same climate and fluctuating temperatures as those in the Tibet mountains are very hard to recreate in most parts of the world. "
There are no credible reports that Black Diamond is a particularly tasty apple or very sweet. None. Read the actual research reports from China. None say that it’s a very tasty apple.
But there are Chinese research reports that say its flavor is average at best. If it were extremely tasty, it would be grown everywhere. It is grown primarily as a gift apple because it’s pretty, not because of its taste.
Black Diamond was a seedling of Huaniu that didn’t get recommended for widespread production in China precisely because it did not have superior taste. Huaniu continues to be widely grown in China although it’s growing out of favor. The Chinese prefer Fuji type apples to Red Delicious type apples.
There is no credible research that says that Black Diamond has special growing requirements to produce tasty apples. It is most likely grown in Tibet because Tibet is very arid and there are fewer apple pests and that makes it easier to grow unblemished gift fruits. It’s the same reason many Chinese apples are grown in arid areas in the NW of the country.
It is very hard for me to understand why someone would pay $7 - $20 US currency for an apple to give as a gift due to the color. i will say i dont understand since it is not reasonable. I’m aware people like to exchange gifts in other countries as much as we do in this country. Would never give a mother, best friend , or anyone a bad tasting apple. In our culture giving a second rate gift and paying a premium for it due to color would not be a mistake made twice.
Black Diamond apples get discussed periodically on various FB groups too. It seems the consensus is that most of the pictures on the interwebs are “doctored up”.
Read up pretty thoroughly on them it sounds like uv rays are much higher at that location. The evenings are very cold. That is ideal for growing very sweet fruit. In my experience Arkansas blacks and other black apples in full sun are much darker. Any in the shaded part of the tree are more of a red than black. People absolutely doctor photos frequently now. In some magazines and catalogs they dont even try to do a good job of it. Looks like they do it with a magic marker! One photo they spray painted the limb and apple black! Google searched and found these photos
I hope to someday have some Black Oxford apples. It has been a very slowwwwww growing variety here. I have two grafted to Antonovka and neither is 3’ tall after 2 growing seasons.
Can hardly grow apples here, but @39thparallel has some grade 1 river bottom soil so he can grow any apple. He grows many black types. If you want photos let me know in ripening season i will go there and take some. My farm works good for pears in the way i grow them but my soil and climate is really marginal at best.
Thanks for the offer. I’ve seen and tasted Black Oxford apples from other growers. Those folks are in warmer zones (5a-5b) and their trees grow faster. I think it may just be one of the varieties that survive, but can’t thrive here due to our winters.
Here in 6b I’ve had troubles trying to raise Black Oxford, too. First grafted it. Died 2 years later. Bought from Fedco. Died…possibly from fireblight. Grafted again. Died.
So I got a tree on M111 from Century Farm Orchard in a big pot …and it’s just leafed out good. So, if I live long enough, maybe that M111 is the ticket. B9 and B118 didn’t succeed.
Black Oxford is one of the very few apples I’ve tried that just doesn’t thrive in my orchard, for whatever reason. (Kandil Sinap and - strangely - Pristine are the others.) Grafted in a good position on a vigorous mature tree, it languished for years and produced very little. I finally removed it a few weeks ago and grafted Clark’s Crab in its place.
I understand that you don’t understand gift apples, but gift apples are nonetheless a fact.
Gift fruits of many kinds in Japan and China are a reality, and big business.
Chinese culture is not the same as US culture.
Japanese culture is not the same as US culture.
This is Takano, a Japanese store that sells only gift fruit:
Black Diamond apples are grown as gift fruits. The fruit that is not good enough to be gift quality is sold locally. The Black Diamond marketing scam is to pump up the price for BD gift apples.
The scam article saying that Black Diamond apples have high glucose levels and are thus very sweet is a joke. Apples generally do not have high glucose levels. They have high fructose levels. Red Delicious does not have high glucose levels so why would Black Diamond? Even if they had high glucose levels, glucose doesn’t taste very sweet compared to sucrose and fructose. The sweetest tasting apples are those with high fructose and sucrose levels. Fructose is about twice as sweet as glucose and about 1.5 times as sweet as sucrose.
When I attended the first international apple symposium in China I tasted at least 30 of the best Chinese apples and saw discussions or write-ups of at least 30 more. Black Diamond was not mentioned anywhere because it’s not in any respect a good culinary apple. No one in China is crying out to eat more Black Diamond apples and researchers are not using it in breeding culinary apples. What they’re breeding with are the best Chinese apples and the best western apples, such as Fuji, Honeycrisp, Gala and Qinguan:
