Back in September, my parents and I visited an event of ProSpecieRara (a swiss organisation for the preservation of rare crops and livestock breeds)
The event was hosted at a commercial farm. This farm has an orchard with conventional dessert varieties and a second orchard, paid for by ProSpecieRara that has some really old, rare or unknown apple varieties in it.
Basically, about 15 years ago, they went looking for old trees with unknown varieties on them.
Every variety the owner or them could not identify, got grafted on 2 M9 trees and put in that orchard.
So there are old forgotten local varieties, seedlings, but also known varieties, that for some reason could not be identified initially.
Additionally some old and now rare but famous varieties were put in, like Goldparmäne (Reine des Reinettes) or some like Esopus Spitzenburg that are famous in their country of origin, but unknown here.
These trees had a name tag, but most of the others have no name, only a number tag.
There was an small orchard tour by the farmer, but honestly, it wasn’t that interesting.
But afterwards, he gave us free run of the orchard and the permission to taste every apple we wanted to. Very generous.
We filled four bags with apples, (only 1 per variety) wrote the number on them and took them home to taste…
In this thread I will present the best of them.
5 Likes
When I searched for their numbers in this swiss database: https://www.bdn.ch/search_form/
I discovered that many had names given to them by the owners of the original tree, but often the “real” name remains unknown.
So I will introduce them ny number and their working name.
Manenbacher 133165
Notes: good Apple, but maybe not a classical dessert variety
Taste: aromatic, slightly bitter, astringent
Texture: dense,crunchy, juicy
Additional info from database: apparently a cider and cooking apple, should keep until December
6 Likes
Jahrapfel 135167
Taste: very aromatic, sweet-tart, fruity
Texture: juicy, very white flesh, some Crunchiness, but not dense flesh, thick peel.
According to PSR: for altitudes, Storage apple, altough Jahrapfel is a common nickname for a storage variety and it is a very good apple I doubt that the modern palate would like this apple after a few months of storage. But as a fall Apple it was excellent.
9 Likes
Erdbeerapfel 109226
Taste: very good, sweet-tart, some kind of berry taste
Texture: somewhat crumbly, but still crisp, thin skin, skin very greasy, almost sticky with a strong smell of ripe berries. Yellow flesh that browns very fast.
4 Likes
Musette 1005718
Taste: sweet with some tartness, similar to Berner Rosen, very aromatic with a hint of strawberries
Texture: somewhat crumbly. Flesh is very white and the red of the skin bleeds into it.
Note: ProSpecieRara is quite sure that this is in fact Himbeerapfel von Holowaus.
7 Likes
Looks like a desirable apple.
1 Like
Yes, very attractive color. Of all the apples I present here I either have benchgrafts or at least scions. I hope I’ll be able to report back in the coming years…
3 Likes
So, finally I have time to continue:
Aaraggerer 110986
Taste: sweet-sour, aromatic, somewhat tannic, I liked it
Texture:hard, not juicy
Looks: really short stalk
Notes from bdn: got 17 out of 18 points in a test for aplle juice, seems to be a healthy tree with low susceptabilty to scab
Unknown 112757
Taste: like a well ripened Boskoop, dominant but not agressive acidity, slightly bitter, very tasty aroma
Texture:somewhat crumbly, dry, thick, soft peel
Notes: While my description sounds unapealing, this was a very good apple. The taste was exceptional and I could image that the worst texture snobs could appreciate this fruit as a baked apple. Additionally, the mother tree was growing at 800 m elevation, which is a plus, since I am at more than 1000 m elevation.
4 Likes
