What are your most fragrant apple varieties?
I am realizing I have a strong sense of smell and am drawn to perfume, flowers, and fragrant fruit! I tried Koru apples, and though the flavor is watery, it smells divine and I love it. I recently bought an esopus spitz tree because the description mentioned it had flavors of lychee, roses and orange. I figured it must smell divine.
Anyone else drawn to aromatics? Any suggestions for me to try/grow?
Yep, there’s two of us. I’m very strongly influenced by fruit smell. Some tomatoes make me sit up like a bird dog cause they smell so good. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about apples to tell you any that really smell good to me other than Reinette… and it is tough to grow in some climates.
I like to smell apples, before I bite into them and just after. Smell really influences taste. I like the grapey Muscat de Venus a lot.
I usually determine ripeness of fruits by smell, but never have tried smelling which smell better. Ought to next year.
Properly ripened Red Delicious is very fragrant. Two years ago I was eating one in my office when a coworker came to talk to me, she was standing outside my office when she told me what a great smelling apple you are eating…
From my notes from trying a lot of varieties this past summer I noted a few that stood out in my samplings as more aromatic:
Rome (both Rome beauty and the red sport)
Has a very pleasant floral scent that can fill a room with some time, the flavor is fairly mild (leaning tart) though so while I find it a solid apple, a lot of folks may find it lacking in pizzazz.
Idared noted a light aromatic quality to it. Decent baking apple but similarly to rome in that it has a more mild flavor that some.
Macintosh has a nice smell that goes along with the flavor. Softish apple that seems to bruise easily (least the handful I found were).
summer crisp (not 100% sure that was the correct variety, but assuming the farmer we got it from had it labelled right)
pink lady / aka cripps pink. To my taste buds this is about the most aromatic an apple i can find in the grocery store so even picked unripe and stored for months it is Fragrant (the orchard ones we found were similar albiet better of course)
gala another rather overly common apple. It’s ok if you like sweet and aromatic.
Summer rambo. This apple might have been at the end of its storage life when we got it because the texture was extremely soft (like melting soft reminiscent of a peach). Descriptions of it claim its got a crunch though so I’m guessing our samples were past their prime. Despite that this apple had a heavenly smell to it. If i can find it immediately after it’s picked in a future year I need to give it a second chance because of how nice it smelled.
Albemarle pippin (aka newtown pippin) has a nice aroma and a really interesting flavor that reminds me a bit of braeburn (most similar moderately will known apple i can compare it to) with some almost tropical notes in it.
Possible mentions to Braeburn amd Winchester; as i think i recall them having nice aromas even if milder ones, but didnt take specific note of it so i can’t be sure.
Of all of these the ones my notes suggest were the most aromatic (going on fragrance only, and based on the samples i found this drought touched year in central Virginia) were in order: summer rambo, cripps pink and rome. Ymmv but hope this gives you some places to focus your search for your perfect apple.
For me its weird… i love the way apples smell. But unlike with peaches where smell and taste overlap a lot for me, I’ve found (in the very limited 45ish varieties I’ve now tried) in apples i tend to not enjoy the actual taste/texture of the ones I experience as especially aromatic as consistently despite wanting to sit in a room with a crate of them all day. (Rome, Albemarle Pippin and -if i remembered braeburn being aromatic correctly, it- being the exceptions). Even then Rome isnt a top 10 variety for me (though maybe in the upper 1/3 of varieties I’ve tried). But then ive tried maybe 45 out of… what? Conservative guess of 4500+ known varieties so… eh?
That said, E.Spitz is amazing. If i thought i had a chance of growing it succesfully I’d get one. I’m still munching on a few we got from a local orchard and they are all wrinkly and ugly after 2.5 months sitting on the counter but they are even tastier now than when we first got them (and they were good then). Imagine with proper cold storage they could last well into the spring (if they didn’t get eaten first). I’m seeing why that variety has the reputation it does.
Aromatics are nice. But so different. I’m not a fan of the lemony scented apples. But wait a few weeks and the scent will probably change.
Aura apples smell like melons or pumpkins
Apple don’t have much of a fragrant. No smell stood out unlike pear, especially Asian pear. There was one time, Envy apple have an aftertaste of Asian pear. Another time, an apple tasted earthy and organic like bread. It was a one time thing. Most apple either tasted sweet, sour, or bitter.
thanks, I’ll have to seek out a Rambo and Rome apple to try or if I can’t, maybe some scionwood. Something about the floral scents really do it for me. =) I can handle a bit of softness in an apple, I don’t like when they are uber crunchy actually. So maybe I’m old fashioned in my tastes and will like softer, more aromatic fruit. But… not Too soft. I agree that cripps pink has a lovely scent!!
This is very interesting comment🤔 .I buy apples from stores. Most times, store bought apples sitting on counter for a while will emit pleasant apple fragrance. But I have never thought Envy’s aftertaste resembling Asian pear .
I just realized you’re in MN. Not sure if Rome will ripen for you if your season is very short (its a late bloomer and at least in VA tends to ripen in October i believe -not as late as pink lady, but late still).
Summer rambo is more of a summer apple i think. So it might be the better bet of those two for you. Good luck in any event. The sheer variety of flavors, scents, looks and textures in apples as a species is remarkable.
I was a one time thing with the Envy apple. I’m not sure how that one tasted so different. It have the same aftertaste of the Asian pear in my backyard. The last Envy apple I purchased was 17 LB worth and none of them have that aftertaste. Those were from New Zealand.
Asian pears barely have taste, at least the ones I grow and compared to most Euro types. To my palate their virtue lies in their high sugar and great texture. I do realize that there are a range of flavors with this species, but in the northeast only the few that acquire highest brix are worth growing, IMO.
Whatever the affects of smell to my apple enjoyment, it is not conscious. If Pink Lady is, in fact, a highly aromatic apple, then if you want high aromatics in an apple you can eat all winter and your climate is favorable to it, you certainly should grow that variety- you will be enjoying them well into spring the following year if you have a fridge to store them in.
That fridge should be only for things that won’t contaminate the flavor. Apples in storage pick absorb scents and most people are not likely to be fond of onion flavored apples. Super market apples tend to taste like the whole store to me, unless you pull them from under big bins of apples.
Wickson crab may be a highly fragrant apple that, in the right climate, is easy to grow and manage.
Seems to me most traditional Winter Storage apples have an aroma going. Even Ben Davis has something going on. Which IMO makes it a good dried apple ring candidate.
Liberty smells like roses and is very disease resistant and tasty. Glockenapfel smells lemony.
Captain Davis apple is very fragrant.
One of the varieties I will re-try after losing it in the bad fire blight year.