Non apple tasting apples

It arrived here during an “unusually” wet season and we’ve had a string of wet springs since. I still hope that in more “normal” springs it will subside and won’t require extra sprays. Black knot has always been around, but in the first 10 years of growing here it wasn’t a problem, now it costs me a fortune just removing it from my nursery trees but makes me one cutting it out from plum trees I manage. Not sure it balances our- it’s work I hate. My helper does most of it but not nearly all.

Fedco still has descriptors up of the scion they sold this year. I read through some of them last night. I should have written some of the names down. They didn’t pull any punches, especially on the cider and crab apples. I recall they described one cider apple as “absolutely horrid” taste but recommended it as an addition to cider. Kona and Frostbite were two I recall not sounding like apple on the less appealing side, but there were a couple that drifted into lemon and pineapple territory.

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I like Fedco but in one of their descriptions they dis Golden Spice pear as being only good for perry. It is a firm pear, true, but tasty and I like it. So it may be that in their conditions it’s disappointing, but here it’s quite good. At least to my tastes!

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My Golden Spice when fully ripe are tasty little devils.

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Man, that sounds awful. I was hoping my Hunge taste would improve in future, but sounds like no, don’t bet on it.

I take it you are not a cheese lover? :grinning: I really like the flavor, but I guess it is not for everyone.

Re: pears, opinions on taste are a real crap shoot. It is challenging to properly pick store and ripen most European pears and so what you hear about them can be inaccurate. Someone on the NAFEX group was recently commenting on what a bad pear Dana Hovey is … for me it is the best pear I ever tasted.

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Apparently Trevor lives in MN, a radically different situation from my own. I fear what happens in eastern WA stays in eastern WA: with the exorbitant light & 30 degree temperature swings each day & night, flavors emerge no one else talks about.
Here Lady develops a strong almond aspect when kept two months past harvest. If we have little wildfire smoke through August then Hunt Russet presents definite tangerine opening with rose petal finish; Claygate hints at filbert (hazelnut) & provolone; GoldRush has loads of sweetness and tartness with a spice I have yet to determine; Lamb Abbey hints at pineapple straight from the tree (next year I will keep some samples until Christmas to see what happens).
Bardsey always has a noticeable lemon overtone fresh, sauced or baked; the lemon might strengthen if dried. I will try that this year.
On the other end of the spectrum, Twenty Ounce has had the most apple flavor I’ve ever experienced. None of my apples could masquerade as another fruit in its taste.

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“tangerine open with rose petal finish” – so poetic!

Interesting. I’ve been evaluating a natural dwarf seedling apple I found and could have sworn the fruit tasted like cheddar at a certain stage of ripeness. I hadn’t heard of this before in apples, but was wondering if it means they have a different dominant acid in the fruit than malic acid.

Here there is also quite a bit of variability year to year site to site. Most pears require a lot of sun to get adequate sugar but the variability issue is much more than relative sun exposure.

Yes, a lot of people either pick pears too early or too late (too often I have picked too early) which is why I mostly have varieties that can ripen on the trees in my nursery.

Such language is learned from describing beer and wine. I actually detect these things in Hunt Russet, and the other overtone/undertones in the others. Some years Claygate defies description at harvest, while I expect its flavors to sort themselves out in storage.

Echoing the HGG fans. It really is a fantastic apple, and tastes very much like a pear.

The red-fleshed apples, especially the Etter varieties, do quite well where I am, and they take on all sorts of interesting flavors. Pink Pearl is a fav of mine, and while it usually tastes like raspberry lemonade, last year it managed to get so sweet it just tasted like fruity candy. The various reds (Pink Pearl, Mountain Rose, Lucy Glo, etc) can develop all sorts of raspberry, cherry, cranberry and bubblegum flavors.

Pristine is a pleasant, refreshing one that always develops a vinegar note. Sweetie, a standard grocery store apple, can sometimes taste like banana candy. Wickson doesn’t taste like any particular fruit to me, but it has a striking high sugar/acid/spice flavor that’s wholly un-apple-like. Wickson and it’s sister Crimson Gold can also sometimes develop a weird savory flavor that reminds me a lot of seafood like lobster or crab, but without the fishiness. The Cinnamon Spice apples I’ve gotten ahold of remind me a lot of anise rather than any other spices, and there’s a very local variety near me called Davisson that tastes like pine or rosemary often. I love collecting oddly-flavored apples. If you’re looking for apple tasting notes, I highly recommend the blog Adam’s Apples, I quite enjoy reading his flavor descriptions.

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An apple that tastes like lobster or crab? That’s a new one!

So far, my experience with Wickson has not yet - yet - offered Fisherman’s Wharf treats. Will look for that!

One of the things I enjoy about the Adam’s Apples blog is Adam’s imaginative descriptions of flavors. I call them imaginative, in part, because my tastebuds never detect a trace of most of what he describes.

Here are some examples:
lemon-drop flavors
faint hints of pear and nutmeg
a hint of cinnamon and hazelnut
strong orange and mango notes
very reinette like
cane sugar, table grapes, lychee
vanilla caramel and tangerine

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