The fruit has been coloring and sizing up pretty nicely in the last two-three weeks and I decided to test five of the varieties. I picked a couple of Pixie Crunch, a Karmijn d’ Sonneville, a Prairie Spy, a Winesap, and a Yellow Delicious.
We’d tried the PC before and it was quite good, but these had hung on the tree a couple of weeks long er (and had colored up considerably more.) We left those for last, and finally skipped them for now, but we’re looking forward to them.
The PS wasn’t ready, although the seeds were black. But it was better than last year’s (a huge disappointment) and the few remaining may still be worthy. The one was starchy, somewhat tough-skinned, not very sweet, but very juicy, lacked good crunch but wasn’t mealy at all, and with traces of the spy flavor coming through in spite of everything. Too early to fully judge.
The Winesap was a rich red and black seeds, and came off of the tree pretty easily, but it wasn’t quite ready. Still, it had great crunch, was juicy, not very starchy, and with the promise of the wonderful sweet-sharp contrast, with the trademark WS flavor. This one is from Nick Botner and was sold as a Stayman.
Yellow Delicious is not my very favorite apple, but they have their place and this one was good. Sweet, nice YD flavor, juicy and firm.
But the Karmijn de Sonneville, not quite fully ripe by my guess, was altogether the standout. Firm, great crunch, juicy to the point of squirting upon biting, a bright, deep carmine, good size, fairly sweet (I expect more to come), sharp but just short of sour, but above all filled with immense flavor, even though not fully developed.
None of my observations included a scent comment because my sniffer is on strike- maybe later I’ll be able to add those.