Apples

A listing of all the apples that I have reviewed.

Melrose Apple

The Melrose Apple has a nice sweet-tangy hit, but veering more sweet than anything else. It has crunchy, crisp white flesh. It’s a really tasty apple. Recommended!…

Rockit Apple

The Rockit apple is a miniature apple designed to be small and reasonably tasty. Its ‘parents’ are the Gala and the Splendour apple. I’ve never had a Splendour apple, but definitely have had Galas, and the Gala influence shines through in the flavor. The Rocket apple is basically a mini Gala. It’s very compact, crunchy,…

Rave Apple

Rave Apple

The Rave Apple is a new variety from the University of Minnesota that is grown/marketed by Stemlit (which is on the sticker!). It’s another child of the Honeycrisp apple. I almost need to tag my apple reviews based on if the apple is related to the Honeycrisp…anyway, I digress. Okay, I don’t digress because the…

Cosmic Crisp Apple

The Cosmic Apple has been in the news lately. Officially they are called the ‘Cosmic Crisp’. They are grown in Washington state…and like other new, ‘shiny’ apples they have a marketing website, logo, and trademark. The whole package. As with any apple with such marketing and pomp, I have to ask: Was it worth it?…

Regent Apple

The Regent apple is interesting to me. It looks normal. Red skin, white flesh, sort of crunchy and soft. Sounds straightforward, right? However, where things get interesting is the flavor. The Regent’s flavor is sweet and vaguely…tropical. I want to say guava-like for lack of a better comparison. I was kind of confused by its…

Greening Apple

The Greening apple…is green. I don’t know the exact variety of Greening these apples were. There are many, apparently (as one can see by searching on Orange Pippin). These belong to one of them. This unknown type of Greening apple has pure white flesh and a good crunch. It is not that tart or sweet—pretty…

Suncrisp Apple

The Suncrisp apple is quite a pretty apple to behold. Not a normal red or green type, the Suncrisp is varies in hue between pale yellow and green, accompanied with flushes of red. At the top of its light hued skin, there’s sometimes a star like pattern of matte brown. It’s truly a colorful apple…

Keepsake Apple

The Keepsake apples I picked up were all a variety of shapes, sizes, and…curvatures. Supposedly that is its shtick from what I read from Orange Pippin. Despite varying shapes, they were all consistently red with some yellow flushes. But who cares about appearances when you’re just going to eat it? Well, some people do, but…

Otsego Tart Wild Apple

These Otsego Tart Wild apples were ones I picked up at a Wisconsin Farmer’s Market without knowing much about them. I couldn’t find anything online about them in a general search. But I found out a lot by trying them! What did I find out…well, that their name is completely accurate. They are tart. These…

Sonata (aka Pinata/Pinova) Apple

The Sonata Apple is actually the Pinata Apple/Pinova apple. Just another name for it…and I have already reviewed the Pinata apple. Like the Kanzi/Nicoter apple, this apple has a variety of given names and branding associated with it. Which are not always well known… But I know now, thanks to Orange Pippin as usual. Regardless,…

Red Gravenstein Apple

The Gravenstein Apple is an heirloom apple, introduced hundreds of years ago, that has reached some mainstream appeal to stories of its growing in California and cult status. Despite the association with California, I was able to get some Red Gravensteins at a Wisconsin Farmer’s Market. This ‘Red’ variety is basically a version of the…

Autumn Glory Apple

The Autumn Glory aesthetically is a typical apple. Nothing exciting there… The flavor, though…. The flavor has a punch of tangy sweet in the beginning. It fades a way for a few moments then finishes with a tart-tangy-ish note that lingers in your mouth. It really lingers. That’s what makes this apple special. Asides from…

EverCrisp Apple

I’ll cut my ‘Honeycrisp’ knock-off rant down to a minimum. It’s self-evident in the name—the EverCrisp is a child of the Honeycrisp. Let’s move on with our lives and discuss the qualities of the EverCrisp apple and not its lineage. It’s crispy. Who knew!? But it really is. The EverCrisp is tiny, crunch, sweet, and…

Sugarbee Apple

The SugarBee apple is a child of the Honeycrisp apple. Like the Juici apple, it’s trying to be…the perfect apple or Honeycrisp 2.0. I’m not going to say I’m getting tired of this completely, because the results have been generally delicious. The SugarBee is no exception. The SugarBee apple has a light, airy sweetness. An…

Juici Apple

The Juici apple is another attempt by the Human race to engineer the perfect dessert apple. Or something like that. It’s like after the Honeycrisp came into existence everyone’s been trying to improve on it and making basically slight variations of the same concept. An apple that is: crispy, juicy, and sweet. That second quality…

King David Apple

The King David apples that I had a chance to try were the last of their type at my grocery store. I could tell they were on the older side, and yet, I had to try them anyway. They were a new apple to me so I had to have them! They were on the…

Nikita/Nicoter (aka Kanzi)? Apple

This was going to be a full fledged review of a new apple called the Nikita apple…but it turns out it is just another name for the Kanzi apple. The first clue was that they rang up as the same item, like APPLE KANZI/NIKITA, at the checkout. And then I searched around and Orange Pippin…

RubyFrost Apple

In this era, even apples have websites. The RubyFrost apple is another apple that has a marketing website dedicated to it. It really doesn’t mean much, all things considered. Everything has a marketing website nowadays—especially apples with cutesy names and pretty skin. It really doesn’t mean that much when it comes to the quality of…

SnapDragon Apple

The SnapDragon apple is a richly red fruit. It’s really, really red. I mean, that’s clear, I hope, from the pictures of it. Texture, something not clear from pictures is this: the SnapDragon is firm and stable. I could determine that just by touch. I thought, upon picking it up, the SnapDragon is an apt…

Koru Apple

Another New Zealand variety of apple, the Koru Apple is a rich red and yellow flushed fruit. According to its website (yes, apples have websites), koru is a Maori word “for the new unfurling fern frond as it unfolds to create a new leaf”. I suppose that explains the little curl insides its apple logo. Yes!…

Pazazz Apple

The Pazazz Apple’s skin is colored as a burst of red and orange with highlights of yellow that spread across it’s outer layer. This slightly waxy skin breaks apart easily when you bite down into it. The flesh releases this powerful sweet flavor that spreads across the corners of your mouth. This sweetness has hints of tropical flavor to it–think…

Golden Russet Apple

The Golden Russet Apple, like the regular Russet Apple, has splotches of rough, brown skin. These areas are concentrated on the top and bottom parts of the apple. Below these brown regions is a swatch of green that wraps around the entire circumference of the apple, which is quite tiny compared to the massive apples…

Sweetie Apple

The Sweetie Apple name says that it is going to be sweet, and, hopefully, delicious. In its shape it shows itself as a taller, more oblong fruit. The color of its thin skin are a flush of red, yellow, and orange. The combination of shape and hue give it a rather nice look to it.…

Arkansas Black Apple

The Arkansas Black Apple is a lusciously dark apple. From a distance I mistook it for a plum. Look at that maroon, purply skin and the plump silhouette. Simply a dead ringer for a plum. The appearance is, interestingly, not the only place with similarities between the two, by all count, disparate fruits. The notes…

September Wonder Apple

The September Wonder is a relative of the relatively common place Fuji apple. Differentiating it in appearance from the common-place Fuji Apple, this type of apple has many dark, rough blotches across its pinkish skin, . Another thing that separates the September Wonder apple and the Fuji Apple is the flavor. It has the tropical…

Blonde Apple

The Blonde Apple, is well, blonde! Look at that pale yellow-green skin. It just glows. The flesh underneath the skin blends in right with it. Under certain lighting, the two hues can seem almost indistinguishable from each other. The consistency of this muddy yellow flesh is hard and crisp. Not the crisp that is juicy…

Mollies Delicious Apple

The Mollies Delicious Apple makes a statement with its name. It says it is going to be delicious. It says so right in its name. Mollies Delicious Apple. That is a large standard for it to set for itself. Being delicious is not something every apple can achieve. And it happens to fall very short.…

Paula Red Apple

The Paula Red Apple is an apple flushed with two colors. Part of it is a light green hue and the other a dark red. The skin looks like a fusion of the vibrancy of summer and the heartiness of autumn. The colors blend together marvelously to create a striking gradient. Unfortunately, the flavor does…

Pristine Apple

The tartness of the Pristine Apple comes on slowly. When I first bit into it and began chewing I was like: “This Apple isn’t that tart or sweet. Meh.” And then the tartness came spontaneously. It didn’t hit my taste buds over the head with it, though. The Pristine Apple is generally like a tone-downed…

Lodi Apple

The Lodi Apple is a small, petite apple with a soft green skin. The photos make the color seem darker, but it is really quite pale. It looks dainty and simple. The flesh is bright white, and as you can probably tell from the above image, What may not be obvious is that it is…

Haralson Apple

These Haralson apples were fresh from the tree. I got them at an apple orchard. Each one looked a little different. Some were light green and others were a rich velvet red. They were very beautiful. But that is just aesthetics. What about their taste? Well, Haralson apples are known for being baking apples, and…

Golden Delicious Apple

The Golden Delicious apple is one of the typical sights at generic grocery stores. A constant apple feature. Does its mainstream appeal have any tangible basis? Not very much, in my opinion. The Golden Delicious apple is hesitantly sweet. A one-note, lull fest of sweetness that did not captivate me. The flesh was tender and…

Envy Apple

The Envy apple is a striped orange and red apple hailing from New Zealand. Crunchy and crispy, the flesh has watery juice that feels weak. This loose juice has a flavor that I found hard to pin down. The Envy apple was both grape-y, guava-y, and pineapple-y at the same time. I can not really…

Emergo Apple

The Emergo apple, from new Zealand, is reminiscent of other New Zealand apple varieties such as the Eve. The crunchiness of the flesh is sublime. The taste is subdued, a vague tartness with sweet notes hovering around it that barely register or make that much of a statement. Scattered through the Emergo apple are pockets of Fuji-like…

Eve Apple

Another apple from New Zealand, the Eve apple is rich red variety. The dark, velvety quality of the skin is appealing. It feels almost devilish. Something a villain would munch on. As for the Eve apple’s munching quality, the flesh is crisp beyond belief. The moment I bit down and an audible crunch rang through…

Cripps Pink Apple

Cripps Pink apples are also named Pink Lady Apples, depending on the ‘quality’. I am not quite sure on the standards that are used to make this distinction, so I go into the Cripps Pink with an open mind for comparing the two apples. Since the Cripps Pink is essentially the Pink Lady, the two different…

Kanzi Apple

The Kanzi apple is a New Zealand apple variety. The yellow-red skin is crisp and crunchy. What lies beneath that skin is moist, succulent flesh. Sweet flavored juice seeps from the white flesh. The Kanzi apple’s sweetness is airy and graceful. It slowly ascends into a gentle tartness that completes the flavor profile. The Kanzi apple…

Autumn Greeting Apple

The Autumn Greeting apple is one of those apples where after pondering the flavors and essence of it did I understand why it is called what it is. ‘Autumn Greeting’ is an ingenious name for this apple. The notes of tart-sweetness that creep up are like a callback to a variety of ‘fall’ apples. It is…

Lemonade Apple

Lemonade is an absolutely perfect name for this apple. Not only is the Lemonade Apple yellow, it has a biting tart that is reminiscent of lemonade. Was not so punchy that it was distracting, just enough to be interesting. The flesh was succulent and full of this tart-sweetness. Broke apart easily, unlike the waxy skin. The…

Breeze Apple

I found the Breeze apple to be extremely aesthetically pleasing. The purple-redish color was enchanting. The flavor was not as appealing as the Breeze apple’s looks. It was a simple tropical-sweetness with a faint tart edge. The entire profile was very mild; there were points when I could have considered it bland. The saving grace…

Smitten Apple

The Smitten apple appears unassuming. It has the countenance of any other ‘red’ apple. Stripes of red and yellow. Decent size. It looks plain. Its taste is not. It has a delectable tang that sings with its undertones of sweetness that become stronger the closer the flesh you get to the core. The sweetness can…

Star Apple

I had such high hopes for this apple. A name like ‘Star’ connotes a burst of flavor. There was nothing from this Star apple . Bland. Crunchy and juicy, but devoid of flavor. I could not finish it I was so unexcited by it. Even with apples that have a flavor or texture I do not…

Tentation Apple

At first glance I did not think the Tentation was an apple. It looked like a narrow Asian Pear or some other fruit. My first impression of the flavor was that it was similar to the Lady Alice: that it was like a pear. This was true until it became sweet. It was like the…

Lady Alice Apple

The Lady Alice is small, unassuming, and flushed with delicate yellows and reds. It is a petite apple, and it did not take many bites to eat it through. Although it is an apple, it tastes almost exactly like a pear. The texture mirrors that of one as well. I found myself getting thirsty after eating…

Pacific Rose Apple

The Pacific Rose is a rose indeed: the colors of the skin range from yellow to pink to dark red. Each apple looks strikingly different, the swirls and blotches vary considerably. It crunches like a pear, the flesh is juicy and moist. The taste is also sort of pear-like, but much much sweeter. I almost…

Lady Apple

The Lady apple is an apple ‘oddity’ due to their size. They are small and adorable. I could fit three in my hand. Asides from aesthetics the Lady apple is crunchy, yet not crispy. The crunch was dry. The Lady apple does not have much juice nor flavor. Little bits of sweetness lurk somewhere, among…

Junami Apple

The first thing that came to mind when I bit into the Junami apple was ‘reserved.’ There is not much crunch to it. The skin is of medium thickness, a little waxy but with not much flavor, while the flesh has a loose grain with enough juice to call it juicy. The flavor is the most reserved part of…

Orin Apple

The Orin apple reminded me of the Green Dragon when I saw it, but it was shorter and fatter. The familiarities continued as I bit into it: the flavor has the similar guava-like quality to it. The taste is very airy and tropical-fruity. The skin is brittle, without flavor while the flesh is slightly mushy and…

Granny Smith Apple

The Granny Smith apple. A staple apple: one of the major flavor profiles. For tartness it is the baseline. It is the tart apple. Along with the tart flavor that it is known for, it has crisp white flesh. It is hard to review the Granny Smith: its purpose and ethos is well known. It…

Kiku Apple

The Kiku apple has great color and shape: it is both plump and bright red. Quite photogenic. As for taste it is as bold as its color. Super tart, verging on unbearable. The first note of flavor before that tartness is a sweetness, and that note returns after the blast of tart. The Kiku is full of…

Opal Apple

The Opal apple is definitely crunchy. The skin broke off perfectly, and the flesh had just enough juice to be succulent but not so much as to be watery. The taste is where it gets interesting: it has sweet notes in the beginning, but it transforms into a sort of spicy tang. Neither of these flavors…

Piñata Apple

The first thing I noticed when biting into the Piñata apple was that it had tough flesh. The second was that it tasted very fruity and sweet. It starts off with a zesty sweetness then transforms into a acidic tang. The flavor is hard to pin down: it has elements of a tropical sweetness, a…

Aurora Apple

The Aurora apple’s flesh is a pale yellow, much paler than the pictures show. Very unassuming. The flavor was just like that. It started off barely sweet, then rose in flavor the longer I chewed. In general the flavor was weak, but their were some bites that had hints of tang. The flesh was pliable, crunchy to bite into but…

Green Dragon Apple

The first bite of the Green Dragon apple was intense. It was like riding a tropical flavored roller coaster. The skin was flavorful and chewy by itself, but the flesh was something else. I thought it tasted like a Fuji, or some other tropical-sweet apple at first. That thought did not last long as waves of guava-like…

Calville Blanc Apple

I felt a rush of excitement looking at the Calville Blanc. It looks bizarre and unique, not a normal style apple. The ridges are so different from other apples with their smooth, oblong shape. In taste it is not normal either. It has a lemon-like sweetness in the front, with a similar styled acidity following it.…

Pink Lady Apple

True to its name, the Pink Lady apple is quite pink in skin tone. The flesh is hard and crispy, with a sufficient amount of juice. I felt the skin had a sweeter flavor than the juice. Overall I would call it tangy, but it was not a strong flavor. I would almost call it bland. It…

Braeburn Apple

The Braeburn apple has skin with hues that mix between green and red. The flesh is tough and crispy, while the skin is on the more delicate side. Very juicy, each bite brought more and more out of the flesh. The taste is powerful. Rich, pure tang with acidic undertones. Some bites had my tongue burning just…

Ida Red Apple

The first wave of flavor of the Ida Red is a intense mixture of strawberries and banana. Following that is a tangy tart. At one point in the apple I tasted such strong amounts of banana it felt like I was eating one. The flesh is soft and pliable and the skin is not crunchy.…

Northern Spy Apple

Something about the Northern Spy apple screams ‘Fall:’ the colors are a mix between green and red, and it has that brownness at the top. It looks like a fall fruit. Tastes like one too. It has the flavor profile of cider. Tart, a little acidic, but has some sweetness lurking about. The texture was not crunchy…

Russet Apple

The skin of the Russet apple is brown and rough, making it visually striking and unlike other apples. It is coarse to the touch and has a slight fuzz over it. The skin is tough and hard to bite into. The flesh is stiff and unwieldy, comparable to that of an unripened pear. As for…

Ambrosia Apple

The Ambrosia apple is gorgeous. Round, with a vibrant red and yellow hue. It tasted like honey, but I’m not quite sure why. It was like the first note of a scoopful of honey, and then it faded away. As far texture, its flesh was delicate, but it had some crunch. Very juicy, a little on…

Cameo Apple

The Cameo apple is plump to hold. The size is perfect. Large enough to be substantial but not so much as to be unwieldy. The skin is delicate and easy to break into and the flesh is moist and crispy. Crunchy with every subsequent bite. Just perfect. The Cameo gets even better with its flavor. It is…

Spitzenburg Apple

Apparently Thomas Jefferson really liked the Spitzenburg apple. He thought it was one of the best apples, and he grew them in his own orchard. But that was then and this is now. Tastes have changed and so has, probably, the Spitzenburg that I ate. In this twenty-first century the skin of the Spitzenburg was easily…

Pippin Apple

The Pippin apple has a decidedly mediocre flavor; it is tart, but not a unique tart. That was all there was for flavor, really. A simplistic tart. Not a bad tart, just not very complex. The flesh was much the same way, it was on the tougher side of crunchy. I would say the Pippin is…

Orleans Reinette Apple

The Orleans Reinette has an interesting skin color with the brown top and the green tone. Not only is the skin aesthetically interesting, it has a quirky taste with its lemony flavor. Orange-like. Citrusy. This was a nice surprise as it was the same flavor profile as the flesh. Unlike the skin, the flesh was tart and had…

Rubinstar Apple

If the Rubinstar is anything, it is crispy. Crackling sounds chorused as I bit into it. This effect does not last long. The deeper I delved into the flesh of the Rubinstar the more pliable it became. The skin was the most crispy of the apple, overall the flesh was soft. Confused was my experience…

Winesap Apple

There is something with the name Winesap that intrigued me. It seemed unique. I expected some grand taste sensation from it. I didn’t get that, but it was a pretty good. Tart and tangy would be the best way to describe it. The flavor did not last long: it went away quickly. The flesh is hard…

Ruby Jon Apple

This picture of the Ruby Jon apple does not do its color justice: the Ruby Jon Apple is much darker and velvety in reality. Asides form the color, the first thing I noticed about the Ruby Jon apple was the grainy-ness of the flesh. Then came the apparent dryness of the apple. Although it tasted dry…

Swiss Gourmet/Arlet Apple

The Swiss Gourmet apple, also known as the Artlet, is vibrant in skin color. Biting into it felt like a travesty. To break apart those lovely covers into white flesh. Travesty turned into pleasure, as the Arlet has a candy-like sweetness. For lack of a better word I will say dessert-like. If it were a piece of candy or…

Jonagold Apple

The Jonagold looks like a typical apple that is see in shows and movies: red with stripes, and of that average-medium size that fits perfectly in your hand. It is epitome of everything I expect in a fall-esque apple. Crispy and crunchy. The flesh is tart and succulent, but not too juicy such that eating becomes messy. Some…

Empire Apple

The Empire apple is extraordinarily crisp and crunchy. Its flesh is hard and breaks audibly. The skin is a little bitter and tough, but that does not detract from the experience that the white flesh gives. The Empire apple’s succulent body is a synthesis of sweet, tangy, and tart. Mostly the latter. Juice flows from…

Mutsu Apple

The Mutsu apple is distinguishable for the spots on its skin. The apple I had to take a picture of doesn’t show it, but on most Mutsu they have black freckled spots covering their pale green skin. Some Mutsu’s have a red flush, like the one pictured. The flavor is what really makes it. The Mutsu begins as sweet…

Cortland Apple

Cortland apples are another type of fall apple. When I bit into it I thought it was going to have crispy flesh: the skin was tough to break into. I was wrong though, the flesh is moderately soft. Not all apples benefit from having crunchy flesh, and this one works well with the softness. There is a…

Rome Apple

The Rome apple is tiny and dense. The amount of effort I had to exert to simply bite into it was obnoxious and when I did tear a chunk off the flesh was dry. What scant juice there was within the Rome apple’s flesh was tasty. It would be best described as an airy tartness. The flavor…

Macintosh Apple

The Macintosh apple is soft and round. Within seconds of my first bite I knew that the flesh of the Macintosh apple was mushy. In the unappealing way. It just fell apart. The texture is frail, and does not have much juice. The flavor of the Macintosh apple is a mix between tart and sweet. It begins sweet…

Jonamac Apple

The Jonamac apple is a cross between the McIntosh and Jonathan. It has a gradient between red and green, as shown in the picture. Rather large. The flesh of the Jonamac apple is not crunchy or crisp, but is firm. Firm and soft at the same time. Easy to bite into, sort of dry. It is mildly tart.…

Diva Apple

Diva Apple

The Diva apple is a small and normal-looking. Biting into it is easy. There was a lot of liquid in the Diva apple. It felt almost soft and mushy. Its watery-ness lends itself to a mushy texture but it is actually crunchy. Taste wise the Diva apple is bland. It has some flavor, a kind of…

Tsugaru Apple

The Tsugaru apple does not have any specific physical characteristics that make it distinguishable. It kind of looks like a Fuji. The texture and consistency is best described as barely enough to be considered crunchy. Like, I would almost call it mushy. Soft, but somehow hard enough to give a crunch. As for taste, it is really…

Sansa Apple

The Sansa apple is squishy to the touch and soft to bite into. Not a mushy soft: delicate soft. This gentler consistency works well with the floral sweetness. I can’t exactly put it into words, but the Sansa apple doesn’t taste like an apple. It tastes like some flowery light piece of something. A sweetness that is borderline candy-like.…

Honeycrisp Apple

The Honeycrisp apple: The luxury model of the apple world brought to us by the University of Minnesota. Worshipped as ‘the’ apple. It does live up to its name. It is crispy, and honey-like in its sweetness. It is good. A solid raw-eating pick. Yet there is nothing specifically unique asides from the fact that it excels…

SweeTango Apple

The SweeTango Apple is another apple created by the University of Minnesota. On the first bite I knew I would like the SweeTango Apple. It is crisp and hard to bite into; I made loud crunching noises chewing it. The juice followed from it was succulent and fit perfectly with the established texture. The taste of it was immediately…

Zestar Apple

The Zestar apple is one of the apples created and cultivated by the University of Minnesota. It felt squishier than other apples, just by touch. Not all apples are of dense consistency, so I was not going to judge it based on just feel. I bit into it, the skin was soft, which was what I felt with…

Gala Apple

The Gala apple is one of the more popular apples on the market. It is crunchy, juicy, and has a sweet flavor that is not very complex. The Gala apple pairs well with most foods, and is an excellent choice for raw consumption. Sometimes, however, it can be on the mushier side and be a bit bland. I don’t…

Pink Pearl Apple

The Pink Pearl apple is one of the most unique apples I have come across. It looks different, unusual at first. The top parts of the apple had the brown ring around the stem, and the coloration was light green as seen in the picture. It gets even stranger when you bite into it. The insides…

Red Delicious Apple

Once upon a time consumers believed that red meant ripe. The Red Delicious apple was bred for that belief and nothing else; their color was specifically bred for. Not flavor. This single-minded approached to breeding is why the Red Delicious variety is, quite frankly, tasteless. Red Delicious are now known for their ‘terribleness.’ The stereotype…

Ginger Gold Apple

The flesh of the Ginger Gold Apple has a styrofoam-esque consistency. The Ginger Gold Apple was neither crispy nor mushy. It straddled some line. Its flavor qualities was much the same. It has a mellow sweetness that registers as quaint. It is not a spectacular apple. The Ginger Gold Apple is unassuming and unoffensive.…