I’ll cut to the chase: if you can grow Dana’s Hovey and White Doyenne for pears, they are terrific. Warden Seckel makes a decent dessert pear. and Winter Nelis is more than serviceable, but not spectacular. We’ve gone through the first three already and are working on the last. All held up in the fridge in plastic bags. We’ve also been eating Golden Spice, which is quite OK - better in my mind than some claims that it’s better suited for perry rather than eating out of hand.
As for apples, we’ve eaten them as they came. State Fair, very decent, bright, juicy, crunchy, largish cell size, and really nice after a summer without homegrown. Ginger Gold, a real delight and something of a surprise. Loads of flavor, on the sweet side, smallish cells, a large apple with fine crunch and juiciness. Pixie Crunch was a nice small apple, and we still have a few in the fridge, but they didn’t stand out for us this year. They won’t go to waste but they won’t be missed.
But here’s the deal. We harvested Rubinette and Karmijn de Sonnaville along with minor numbers of Jonagold, Kidd’s Orange Red, Prairie Spy, and a couple of others. And a lot of Liberty. Decided to eat the Rubinette and Karmijn right off and let the Liberty ride -we’ll be working on those the rest of the winter. But we had quite a lot of Karmijn. That’s a good thing. They are so good that as long as we have them we probably won’t be eating any of the others. I want to get these in me before they lose their crunch and sharp edge, and the sharpness has faded slightly already. The Rubinette are delightful, but subtler, more understated than the Karmijn. Both are great, repeat great, apples, with Karmijn edging out Rubinette this year for us, at least.
We’ve also got a handful of Calville Blanc that I’m saving for pie, There are a few Goldrush that were picked too early, but the one sampler I had was extremely promising, and I hoping the three or four I still have will age well, as they are said to.