Picked up a bag of Gala Apples at a local Supermarket to add to a Waldorf salad I was making. Chose the Gala since I wanted something sweet from this year’s production, rather than something a year old from CA storage. Not sure who the grower was but the Apples were packed in bags with just the name of the Supermarket. I had some slightly mushy Daybreak Fuji and some green Granny Smith from the farm but neither seemed to hit the mark of what I was looking for.
The Supermarket Apples were the worst Apples I ever tasted! No taste and absolutely no smell. Store offered a double money back guarantee to returned them on my next trip for cash refund.
Wish I had a better understanding of why the Apples were so bad.
Some research has shown that MCP depresses Apple scent so perhaps that was part of the problem. Wonder if it could have been a liquidation of last years Apples from CA storage?
I used some overripe Daybreak Fuji from the refrigerator in the salad which worked much better than expected.
MCP is a product used on Apples in storage and other fruit to prevent ethylene from binding with the fruit and getting soft in storage. Trade name is Smart Fresh which helps stores with less than ideal storage conditions keep fruit longer.
Don’t know the answer to your question. But, yesterday I saw 3# bags of striped Gala, YD, RD, and Macintosh…at Save-A-Lot store. $3.99 each. I didn’t buy at that time but may later.
I think these are from Michigan or Ohio…this year’s crop. Next trip, maybe I’ll grab a bag.
I was in Wenatchee Washington in 2022. The Cascadian warehouse in the picture was at one time the worlds largest apple warehouse. Refrigerated storage since 1930 that could hold 1,000 railroad cars of boxed apples. A footprint of 45,360 sq ft. It went up for sale in August for 6.5 million dollars. Hope is for apartments and businesses to move in. With cast in place reinforced concrete walls, it isn’t going to fall down.
I really like it when the bag shows the name of the grower/packer.
No grower named on the bag of lousy apples I bought so I don’t know what to avoid except for apples in bags with the supermarket name on it.
I always try to buy apples from eastern growers when I can identify them. Over the years, I have purchased a lot of excellent apples in the supermarket which came from growers in NC, VA, Pennsylvania and New York. Bought some lousy apples from Costco last year from a huge grower in Washington. I will not name the grower but they were labeled as organic and also “US Extra Fancy.”
Nothing fancy about those apples. They were terrible!
I have some store bought Pink Lady that have no sweetness. The grand kids wouldn’t eat them. A few years ago we had some local markets that bought all their apples from upstate NY in season. They were very good. The company was sold there stores to Aldi. Now no more local apples.
This apple talk got me hungry so I went out at lunch to the nearby produce stand that sells local apples along with mountain grown Virginia apples. $1.49 a pound so a good price compared to Kroger up the road. I got Stayman, Jonagold, Evercrisp and Candy Crisp. Never had a CC and a quick check online said it was so so. Eating it now and it is mediocre. The first bite was a juicy sweet blast but no depth in the flavor after that.
Aldi…I hate giving business to foreigners if I can buy similar things from US or Kentucky owned stores.
I like apple pie…but most super market apples are no good for that except Granny’s.
Enjoy a cobbler made from Arkansas Black, for instance.
Yakama is the center of the apple production these days. The huge warehouses in Wenatchee of the old days are replaced with smaller ones nearer the orchards and away from railroads once trucking took over. Wenatchee is a fascinating area along the Columbia river. Looking east are the desert areas heading to Spokane. Looking west heading to Seattle are the tree covered mountains still topped with snow in late June. The hotel had a glass elevator to enjoy the view. The sharp transition of terrain was separated by the river.
The second photo shows an antique apple sorting machine. If you look at the metal parts you see two “slingers” that catch one apple at a time coming off the conveyer. Two lines of fruit at once. It slings the apples in the air and they fall onto the canvas catch nets and roll into boxes. The lightest fruit go further in the air. Before the fruit arrives to the point, it is brushed clean by revolving cotton flaps. The whole thing is rather long and very slow as you would expect. The museum does weekly demos of it but not while I was there.
The last photo is a wall of hundreds of apple crate labels from all the various orchards. Some are very rare and some were saved as NOS from forward thinking individuals. The museum had many for sale as well as the various antique stores in the area. I got a bunch that featured mountains in the background.
My visit was timed to fit the normal cherry harvest season. But a later than usual spring and a late frost had pushed the season two weeks later and froze out many growers.
A few more more pics. First you see desert areas behind the apples. Second you see the mountains with snow and the transition to dry. Also there are a bunch of poly crates at end of apple trees. They are stacked in the parking lot of one of the mini cold storage buildings right off the orchards. Third is the river that provides most of the water for the trees. In that area it was low volume sprinklers under the canopy that keep the row middles green as well. Didn’t see any drip lines.
I saw this thread and hoped to find the answer to a riddle from two years ago, when all the apples from a very old apple tree I’ve had in my yard for like forever came out tasteless as if they were made of cardboard. Every two years I harvest big, juicy, crunchy and sweet apples from that tree, it’s some old variety of a name unknown to me, quite late, the apples usually get ready late September to the middle of October, and they’ve always been delicious except for that one season two years ago. And it wasn’t even some bad season weather-wise either - long summer extended well into October, mostly sunny and warm weather, and the apples were useless! I mean - the goats liked them, the geese and chicken too, but I hoped to store some for myself for the winter and couldn’t - all red and beautiful on the outside, but there was no taste and no smell to them, just as if I was munching on a cardboard box filled with sawdust, only juicier. Go figure. (No, I didn’t have covid :D)
I live the other side of the Columbia River & desert from Wenatchee & Yakima. Some apples can’t hack the dry heat even 500 feet higher than the desert, which I learned by trying to grow them. If conditions turn out wrong - no cool nights at all in NC, for example - some varieties will disappoint. Here the low humidity sucks the aroma out of cultivars that in Wisconsin or MN drive people from a room they are so strong. Here, nada.
BTW, locally grown Granny Smith (local to Spokane, WA) picked the latter half of October are blushed over cream, not over all green. They have flavors (yup, plural) & some sweetness along with the classic acid. Keep for four months. So Much Better in hand or in pie.
local apples are so good here. I never knew how good they really could be, the variety. there was a real old orchard where I grew up and we would eat those as kids, wormy but different than the bland store apples- but moving here to Spokane there’s just so many kinds locally grown.
I think I’ve got 15 varieties growing or grafted myself. it’s just that we’ve got to spray because of those big growers.
