Peter Smith
Writer and editor
- November 2, 2009 • 6:35 am PST
- + responses
Well over 10,000 named apple varieties once grew on farms across the Northeast, but the need for high-yielding dwarf trees producing durable, unblemished fruits led most growers to focus on the dozen or so standbys that you can now find year-round at any grocery store. Red Delicious. McIntosh. Granny Smith.
Winekist is a medium-sized apple with wine-red flesh. Some say it tastes like cranberries; others say strawberry. I got a chance to taste this rare apple, which isn't in commercial production and only exists in Winthrop, Maine because a farmer named Morris Towle collected the apple during the middle of the 20th century. The apple, only one of them, came to my door thanks to an heirloom apple CSA, run by Maine's John Bunker, an apple preservationist (you can find his trees here).
Bunker, the socalled Johnny Appleseed of Maine, has been rescuing and grafting rare heirloom varieties began in the early 1970s. Local fruit varieties have long played a key role in small-scale diversified agriculture, with apples providing a storage crop and a barrel of distilled apple brandy or hard cider. Contemporary wine- and cider-makers (both licensed and unlicensed) are exploring native apples as an expression of specific regions.
Best of all. He's not alone. Author Gary Paul Nabhan visited North Carolina's Bill Moretz, who also runs a community supported agriculture project promoting apple diversity. As Nabhan writes in Saveur:
I'll raise my core to this.
Winekist is a medium-sized apple with wine-red flesh. Some say it tastes like cranberries; others say strawberry. I got a chance to taste this rare apple, which isn't in commercial production and only exists in Winthrop, Maine because a farmer named Morris Towle collected the apple during the middle of the 20th century. The apple, only one of them, came to my door thanks to an heirloom apple CSA, run by Maine's John Bunker, an apple preservationist (you can find his trees here).
Bunker, the socalled Johnny Appleseed of Maine, has been rescuing and grafting rare heirloom varieties began in the early 1970s. Local fruit varieties have long played a key role in small-scale diversified agriculture, with apples providing a storage crop and a barrel of distilled apple brandy or hard cider. Contemporary wine- and cider-makers (both licensed and unlicensed) are exploring native apples as an expression of specific regions.
Best of all. He's not alone. Author Gary Paul Nabhan visited North Carolina's Bill Moretz, who also runs a community supported agriculture project promoting apple diversity. As Nabhan writes in Saveur:
To people like me, the disappearance of old apple varieties-like the die-off of an animal species-represents a profound loss, in terms not just of botanical diversity or rural cultural history but also of the way we eat. The striking, unusual flavors and cooking properties possessed by these heirloom apples simply don't exist in supermarket varieties.
I'll raise my core to this.
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