An investigation into the Honeycrisp apple and how a complex string of events led to a decline in the quality of a beloved apple variety.
It was a chilly Saturday morning in October, and at my local grocery store, shoppers were browsing the apple selection: piles of Gala, Pink Lady, Golden Delicious, Fuji, Snapdragon, and Honeycrisp beckoned. I lingered over the organic Honeycrisps, pausing to look at the $3.99-per-pound price tag, before filling my produce bag with several conventional Galas, which sold for a more reasonable $1.69 per pound. Though I had my heart set on the Honeycrisps, I’d recently had one too many bland, mealy ones with none of the fruit’s signature snap and sweet, tangy flavor, and I was unsure if I was ready to take that risk again, especially given the price.
It would have been an easier decision if Honeycrisps were as good today as they used to be. I first tasted one 10 years ago, standing at my mother-in-law’s kitchen counter in St. Louis on a cool September day. I grasped the rosy fruit she handed me and took a bite. The apple’s paper-thin skin produced an audible crunch, and a burst of sweet, tart juice immediately filled my mouth. I chewed carefully. I couldn’t recall the last time I ate an apple for pleasure, on its own—not in my hand as a grab-and-go breakfast as I rushed out of the house, not sliced up and slathered with nut butter, and not peeled, cored, chopped, and baked into a pie. The Honeycrisp apple was revelatory for me: It was an apple that I truly enjoyed eating on its own.
And I did, for several years, until I noticed that the Honeycrisp apples I bought were, with increasing frequency, a miss. There were a few good ones here and there, but I often came across Honeycrisp apples that were dry and mealy. Beyond the hefty price tag, there was little to distinguish them from other standard apple varieties. Honeycrisps from my farmers market were typically better than those I purchased from the grocery store, but even those Hudson Valley–grown apples weren’t immune. As recently as September of this year, I had several Honeycrisp apples from a local farm that were terribly mushy and flavorless, making me wonder if they had mistakenly labeled another apple variety—nothing about those apples was like the fruit I had once loved.
I’m not the only one who has noticed the fluctuation in quality. My colleagues Daniel and Megan have both had their fair share of inferior Honeycrisps in the past couple of years. I also found multiple instances of people complaining about Honeycrisp quality on Reddit: Three years ago, a user wrote that the Honeycrisp apples they bought were “unrecognizable from the big sweet apples from the late 00s and 10s.” Another user, who posted earlier this year, mourned the loss of the “super sweet and crisp” apples they were able to find 10 years ago. The Honeycrisps of today, they wrote, are “bitter and barely sweet at all" and "On top of that they aren’t crisp either!”
What went wrong? The answer is both simpler and more complex than you might think, and it’s impossible to answer that question without looking at how the Honeycrisp apple came about—and how it shot to stardom so quickly.
In 1983, David Bedford, one of the seed breeders behind the Honeycrisp apple and a research scientist at the University of Minnesota, had his first taste of the fruit. Crisp and juicy with a pleasant tanginess, the apple was unlike any he’d had before. “It caused me some question,” he tells me, recalling the sensory shock he experienced. “I remember biting it and thinking, well, what’s going on here?” He describes picking up textural and flavor notes similar to Asian pears and watermelons, and trying to decide if the fruit was underripe or overripe. "I don't know if it was a moment or a day or a week that it took me to decide, I don't know what it is, but it's good." The tree, labeled MN1711, bore fruit that was a cross between the Keepsake apple and another experimental variety identified only as MN1627; the tree had failed a winter hardiness test, and the university’s apple breeding program had designated it for the compost heap. Bedford, however, decided to give the tree another chance. It paid off, because it yielded what has since become Minnesota’s state fruit and one of the most popular apple varieties today.
Together with Dr. Jim Luby, the former director of the University of Minnesota’s fruit breeding program, Bedford worked on improving the hardiness, texture, and flavor of the apple—placing it in the university’s evaluation program and observing it under different conditions—until they thought it was good enough to release to the public in 1991. “We had convinced ourselves on the breeding team that this is good, but we had no idea really what the rest of the world was thinking,” Bedford says. “It became clear in time that the world—the consumers—really did like this texture.”
For much of the 1960s and 1970s, Bedford tells me, there seemed to be no interest beyond the Red Delicious, the one “nice big shiny red apple that you could have year-round.” The Red Delicious was the result of the industrialization of the food system: National grocery stores and distributors wanted durable, aesthetically pleasing fruit that could be transported and stored easily, taste be damned. The skin was thick and leathery like naugahyde, with sweet, insipid flesh.
When Grady Auvil, the founder of Washington-based fruit company Auvil Fruit, began importing Granny Smith apples from New Zealand to the United States in the 1970s, it was a refreshing break from the Red Delicious for American consumers. The Granny Smith paved the way for the Honeycrisp: Americans welcomed the green apple’s tart flavor and crunch, signaling to growers and retailers that consumers were ready for different kinds of apples. When Bedford and Luby introduced Honeycrisp seedlings to nurseries and farmers in 1991, “there was at least some open-mindedness,” says Bedford. “Consumers had been sort of awakened to this idea that there was more to apples than Red Delicious.”
The Honeycrisp apple redefined what an apple could be. It was different from any other apple most American shoppers had encountered before, especially for consumers who frequented conventional grocery stores rather than farmers markets, where tastier heirloom varieties could be found even during the heyday of the Red Delicious. Unlike many other apple varieties, the Honeycrisp apple, journalists Deena Shanker and Lydia Mulvany noted in Bloomberg in 2008, “wasn’t bred to grow, store, or ship well," Instead, "It was bred for taste: crisp, with balanced sweetness and acidity.” Earlier this year, Bedford told Scientific American that you could separate the world of commercial apples into two phases: before Honeycrisp and after Honeycrisp. Before the variety’s debut, common grocery store apples were either soft and mealy or firm and dense. The Honeycrisp introduced the concept of a crisp apple to the public and, Bedford says, set a new bar for both customers and breeders—so much so that Bedford estimates, unofficially, that 50% of the new apple varieties coming onto the market today are Honeycrisp offspring.
This success is due to the fact that the Honeycrisp is—no exaggeration—built differently. It has a remarkably thin skin, and a crispness that is the result of the Honeycrisp having much larger cells than other apples. Apple cells contain vacuoles filled with juice; the cells are stacked on top of one another and held together by the lamella, or what Bedford describes as the “glue” that gives an apple its firm, crunchy texture. When you bite into an apple, your teeth cut through razor-thin skin and the layers of cells, fracturing the vacuoles of juice. It's these oversized cells that give the Honeycrisp its unique flavor and texture, making for a truly delicious apple with a crisp texture that people have come to crave.
Because the Honeycrisp was designed to thrive in Minnesota’s climate, Bedford and Luby made the apple available in the rest of the Midwest first, where growing conditions were fairly similar to those in the apple’s home state. Though nurseries began selling Honeycrisp cuttings in 1991, it took several years for the fruit to arrive at farmers markets and grocery stores in the Midwest. And when it did, it quickly became a word-of-mouth phenomenon.
People could not get enough. And unlike common apple varieties like the Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, or Granny Smith, the Honeycrisp wasn’t available to purchase year-round. Instead, it was only sold from September, when the apple was at its peak, to February. This scarcity drove up demand even more.
“People would go to their local apple orchard or to their supermarket because they had heard about [the Honeycrisp apple] in Minnesota or they tasted something,” Dr. Matthew Clark, the head of the University of Minnesota’s fruit breeding program, tells me. “Word got out, people were wanting it,” as the eating experience was “unlike any other.” Soon, growers were planting the Honeycrisp in New York and Washington.
Getty Images / Karolina Wojtasik/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The tree, however, proved difficult to grow, especially in Washington State, the heart of commercial apple production in the United States. (According to the US Apple Association, Washington is projected to produce 179 million bushels—about 63% of all the apples grown in the United States—in the 2024/2025 calendar year, making it the country’s top apple growing state.) “Really a variety cannot be successful unless it’s grown commercially in Washington,” Bedford says. “We sent trees out, they tested it, and I had more than one grower call me and say, ‘That’s the worst tree I’ve ever tried to grow here. I’m pulling all the trees out.’” Not only is the fruit a poor fit for the state’s climate, which is much warmer than Minnesota, but it’s also prone to several physiological and storage disorders, like bitter pit and soft scald, which can affect both the presentation and eating quality of the fruit when it’s stored for an extended period of time.
In order to ensure the health of the tree, it’s essential to thin or selectively remove parts of it, a labor-intensive process. “Even if you’ve done all that hand-thinning and invested a lot in the crop, you can lose a lot of it to [bitter pit],” Josh Morgenthau, the owner of Fishkill Farms in Fishkill, New York, says. “It’s very fickle.” Unfortunately, even when farmers apply all of the best practices for ensuring the quality of their Honeycrisp crop, bitter pit can continue to show up in storage, and Morgenthau estimates that about 20% of fruit that looks clean when picked is no longer sellable because bitter pit shows up after a few months.
The fruit’s extraordinarily thin skin may be pleasant for biting through, but it also means the apple is prone to sunburn, in which the parts of the apple that get more sun exposure experience what scientists call “tissue collapse,” causing the fruit to turn brown or black. The delicate skin also makes it time-consuming to harvest: To prevent the apple’s sharp stems from puncturing neighboring apples in storage, the stems must be clipped extra-short. “Now, if you only had to do a couple hundred of those a day, no big deal,” Bedford muses. “But when you’re picking hundreds of thousands of these things, that slows down the picking process, which increases your costs.” (Dr. Kate Evans, the breeder at Washington State University who came up with the Cosmic Crisp apple, tells me that “something like 10 billion apples a year get picked by hand in the state of Washington.”)
Despite the challenges, growers in Washington—enticed by the profits the Honeycrisp could potentially bring and ignoring their initial bad experiences with it—eventually ended up planting acres and acres of Honeycrisp trees. As of 2017, the apple variety made up 13% of Washington’s apple acreage, making it the state’s fourth-largest cultivar after Red Delicious, Gala, and Fuji. “Farmers don’t miss out on an opportunity for something new and exciting,” Clark says. “Growing apples has tight margins and Honeycrisp and other premium apples give growers an opportunity to make some money and increase those margins.” Given the perceived quality and popularity of Honeycrisps, the variety could sell for far more than many other kinds of apples, making it possible for farmers to make a good deal more money on their crop.
Then there’s the question of storage. Honeycrisp apples can spend up to seven months in common storage (which refers to a climate at 37ºF/2.7ºC) or 10-plus months in controlled atmosphere storage, a reduced oxygen environment near freezing conditions (typically 32ºF/0ºC) that slows down the respiration rate of apples and prevents further ripening. Dr. R. Karina Gallardo, an economics professor at Washington State University, tells me that the longer the storage time, the higher the probability of disorders—which means the more likely it is that consumers purchase a poor-tasting apple.
An apple, however, doesn’t have to be stored very long to develop less-than-ideal flavors and textures. Though Honeycrisps are considered a good storage apple, a fruit that “stores well” could mean many things: It may look perfectly good, but doesn’t guarantee it will still taste good. “An apple can be pretty soft and mealy in six months,” Bedford says. “There’s no magic time for all apples.” There are numerous factors that can impact the quality of an apple in storage—especially when it’s a fickle variety like Honeycrisp, which requires careful tending to at every stage of its life.
Many farmers who invested heavily in planting Honeycrisp trees likely did not take into account just how difficult it would be to grow, harvest, and store the apples. And maybe some just decided it was worth the risk. At its most expensive, at the peak of the Honeycrisp craze in 2012 and 2013, the apple fetched a hefty price nationwide, with Esquire reporting it at of $4.50 per pound in New York City.
To satiate the public’s hunger for the Honeycrisp, a once highly seasonal apple available only in Minnesota, growers have made the apple variety available year-round by planting enough fruit to store for long periods of time. Planting the Honeycrisp in Washington marked not only the shift of the apple from its place of origin—Minnesota—to a growing region it wasn’t well suited to, but was also a shift from a more small-scale, local apple industry to one that was geared towards Big Apple from the start. Growers in Washington never intended to sell their tidy little Honeycrisp crop at local markets during its short season—they wanted to supply the apples year-round, and in large enough quantities to stock supermarket shelves across the country in order to make some serious money.
The move to Washington facilitated the arrival of the Honeycrisp everywhere and made it possible for consumers to purchase the apple variety wherever and whenever they wanted. All the problems with the Honeycrisp became much more common once the apple was grown and distributed on such a large scale; as Cornell University pomology professor Ian Merwin told Axios reporter Nick Halter, “There is no question that the quality that’s in the market is not what it was 10 years ago.” Apples are spending longer than ever in storage, and “even with advances in refrigeration in technology, that further erodes their quality.”
Getty Images / Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Apple growers very possibly over-invested in the Honeycrisp crop without truly understanding that they likely couldn’t deliver a premium product year-round on such a large scale—especially with such a capricious variety grown outside its native zone. For many consumers, the Honeycrisp crop of today has not lived up to the apple’s reputation, and for the first time ever, there is an oversupply of Honeycrisp apples. With a surplus that is 71% higher than the five-year average, the national average for the cost of the apple is just $1.70 per pound. It is the cheapest the apple has ever been—and possibly the least satisfying and delicious it’s ever been.
As Bedford noted above, it is impossible for an apple variety to be “successful” unless it is grown in Washington. But what does success even mean? Turning the Honeycrisp into yet another commodity ultimately defeats the purpose of what Bedford and Luby were trying to achieve: a truly delicious apple with excellent eating quality. The Honeycrisp is a victim of its own success, and has become exactly what Bedford and Luby despised about the variety’s predecessors: a boring commodity apple.
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Comments
By travisgriggs 2024-11-3022:133 reply Wow. Weird when something on HN hits this close to home. I work in AgTech (automated irrigation) in Washington State. I can attest to the love-hate boom-bust relationship this variety is having with the Washington apple farmer.
The article leaves a key point out. This fruit tree is really temperamental to water correctly. Irrigators love and hate this thing. Some fruit bears overwatering gracefully. But with this tree, it begs for water, but if you overwater it even a little, the fruit fails easily. I've watched some big players (Pytech) dump millions of dollars into closed (fully automated), open (just telemetry and recommendation, human then waters) and hybrid loop irrigation methods to try and get this right. It remains a real pain to get right.
(edit: the cosmic crisp is also difficult to grow Just Right(tm))
By windexh8er 2024-12-016:021 reply Interesting!
I actually live in MN so am spoiled by the easy access to quality varieties. Honeycrisp are so "common" here (grown here) that I definitely avoid WA grown stock that seeps into grocery stores more quickly than ever.
I currently have 4 apple trees on the property but have only lived with apple trees for about the last 4 years now. I can't even imagine getting the conditions for a Honeycrisp tree right given the trees I have seem very temperamental. Last year (summer of '23) was a horrible year for our trees due to the summer long drought. Some of my trees are in irrigation zones so they did get decent water, but still failed to yield much.
This year was bonkers. I clocked 34" of rain in my backyard and all 4 trees had the highest yield so far. While these varieties aren't as delicious as a freshly picked, ripe Honeycrisp, they're still 1000x better than any mealy, soft apple from the store that was picked 6+ months ago. The other thing with Honeycrisp is that all of the local orchards have netting protecting all the Honeycrisp because, since the skin is so thin, they're highly susceptible to hail damage. They just seem like too much work given I can buy them grown here.
Curious how long it will be before the automation is perfected? Is this a normal cycle with a new breed of apple?
By thelittleone 2024-12-0111:552 reply A property with apple trees (and space to grow more) is seriously enviable. Hands in earth is one of my favorite therapies. I've been contemplating a move for a few years and this additional inspiration may just be the tipping point.
If you have some space but not a lot, look up "Backyard Orchard Culture".
Practitioners have amazing yields with tiny 5' tall fruit trees. I've seen some people do things that seem crazy like 4 different trees in one planting hole and it works fine.
https://www.davewilson.com/home-garden/backyard-orchard-cult...
By paulette449 2024-12-0217:09 I have a potted miniature lime tree that spends 8 months of the year outdoors and the NYC winter indoors. It's easy to maintain and every year it produces more limes. This year I got at least 30. They taste unbelievable especially versus store purchased. Highly recommended.
By throwthrow4567 2024-12-0114:001 reply the problem with trees is that it takes several years before the first fruit, and the slightest problem with weather will easily kill off all the season's batch... otherwise even more than tempting than an orchard would be an "edible forest"/"forest garden"
By anon84873628 2024-12-0118:09 On a small plot especially you want lots of diversity. Plant many different species and varieties of fruit so you have something to harvest all year long. (Trying to preserve excess harvest can be fun at first but quickly becomes a time consuming chore). Different shapes and sizes of trees also allow you to partition the sunlight and soil resource more efficiently.
Conversely, what are the easiest Washington state apple varieties to grow?
By travisgriggs 2024-11-3023:072 reply Great question. I honestly don’t know. Great example of how “what people complain about” makes up a disproportionate amount of our knowledge.
By drewcoo 2024-12-015:20
So how did we grow these decades ago when when we didn't have this fancy irrigation systems?
By travisgriggs 2024-12-0220:51 We (the industry) paid (barely) an army of immigrant labor to run around turn valves on/off on 4 wheelers. The (automated) irrigation systems are (primarily) to reduce labor costs. There are some plusses to precision watering as well. But the industry is about labor cost reduction.
By anon84873628 2024-12-0118:05 "We" only grew varieties that were less finicky, or only grew them in climates to which they were adapted. We also had less consolidation so failures were less systemic.
By foobarchu 2024-12-0119:52 50 years old technically, 1991 just seems to be when it was released to the public.
This rankings site [1] was shared on HN a couple years ago [2], and since then I’ve switched to Honeycrisp.
While I agree they aren’t always the most tasty, they are almost always (like 98%) crisp and never mealy to the point I want to stop eating it, unlike nearly every other breed I’ve tried (which admittedly is only about 7-8 or the most common ones).
I will take a less flavorful crisp apple 100% of the time over a mealy apple.
So even a mediocre Honeycrisp is, to me, still way better than nearly all the other ones.
As an apple connoisseur myself I’ve switched from honeycrisp to cosmic crisp over the last three years and I’m never going back.
I’m fully aligned I eat apples for the texture above all else, with flavor being important but nothing close to how much crunch eat bite has.
By JackFr 2024-11-3023:34 I have no dog in this fight but I’ve always been amused at my farmers market by the cleverly named Ludacrisp.
By Shog9 2024-11-3022:28 If you get a chance, try WineCrisp. Loads of flavor and stubbornly crisp. The things keep for months, even in less than ideal storage (such as a fridge), and even after losing a great deal of moisture retain a snappy bite.
Only real downside is that the appearance isn't very flashy; they're the russet potato of modern apples.
By flanbiscuit 2024-11-3019:203 reply I realized I like my apples real sour so Pink Ladies are my favorite at the moment.
By semi-extrinsic 2024-12-0112:20 I used to always get Pink Lady, but in the past couple of years I've found Kanzi to be better. And somehow my partner gets less allergic from Kanzi as well.
By stock_toaster 2024-11-3022:21 Same here! Glad I'm not alone. :)
By ndsipa_pomu 2024-12-0114:481 reply Granny Smith's are the best apple. They're one of the healthiest apples to eat and they last a surprising amount of time without going mushy.
By anon84873628 2024-12-0118:281 reply What makes them more healthy than others?
By ndsipa_pomu 2024-12-0119:09 Their green skin can help with inflammation as it contains enzymes that protect T-cells. They're helpful to prevent diabetes and are recommended for diabetics to eat. They're high in phytonutrients and are apparently have the best antimutagenic potential of apple breeds. I think most of their benefits are shared with other green apples.
They've got high fibre content whilst being lower in sugar than other varieties and are good for gut bacteria.
However, the best apple to eat is one that you like as it's better to eat any type of apple than none.
https://wellintruth.com/the-healthiest-apple-variety-the-com...
By flanbiscuit 2024-12-0115:56 I haven't tried one in a long time. Will give them a shot next time I'm at the grocery
YMMV but I've found Honeycrisps mostly crispier than Cosmic Crisps. (I switched in the other direction -- had Cosmic Crisps first.)
By CarVac 2024-12-0114:09 I find that at my local grocery store in NJ, Cosmic Crisps to be more consistently good than Honeycrisps, despite being less crispy. But the best Honeycrisps are better.
Sweetango is also consistently flavorful and crispy and normally better than Cosmic, but the availability is what's inconsistent.
(And a Fuji apple I had in Japan was as good as the best Honeycrisps)
By UncleOxidant 2024-11-3023:26 Cosmic crisp is amazing. I also like a good Fuji, though they're not as consistently good. Jazz and Ambrosia can be good as well. It's nice that we have so many varieties to choose from now. When I was a kid it was either Red|Golden "Delicious" or Granny Smith.
By poulsbohemian 2024-11-3018:10 This is the way... there's research already at WSU for when the Cosmic Crip runs its course and the world is ready for the next apple with the same basic characteristics.
By BoingBoomTschak 2024-11-3022:28 If you ever come to France, try the Chantecler, truly my favourite of them all, extremely consistent and perfect for cakes too.
By mring33621 2024-11-3020:171 reply I agree that Cosmic Crisp are better. But I still prefer MacIntosh, Empire or Cortland, though.
Macs are my favorite too, but they don’t have the consistently crisp texture of the honeycrisp.
By Blackthorn 2024-12-0116:45 Age hits all three of those really badly, they basically have to be picked up locally in season and can't store or ship like honeycrisp can.
> I eat apples for the texture above all else, with flavor being important but nothing close to how much crunch eat bite has.
You may enjoy the Fuyu Persimmon also. Eaten with firm skin is definitely crunchy. The flavor is moderately sweet.
By anon84873628 2024-12-0118:311 reply Don't wait too long though! Because then they get a soft jammy texture that some people absolutely hate. Transitioning into full goo eventually. (Yes that's the case for fuyu too, not just hachiya).
Also some fuyu can still be astringent when very firm / underripe.
By pvaldes 2024-12-028:59 Put it in a blender. Lemon juice optional. This will destroy the slimy texture. Fill a glass with the mix and then add cream on the top and you will have a spectacular dessert.
Persimmons are three (four?) totally different fruits in one.
By whamlastxmas 2024-11-3018:38 I discovered cosmic a few months ago and refuse to buy anything other
By 7thaccount 2024-11-3023:56 Cosmiccrisp is great. Like a honeycrisp, but with some tartness.
By ryukoposting 2024-12-011:41 Out of curiosity, where do you live? I've been a Midwesterner my whole life and I don't relate all that strongly to the article.
By mastercheif 2024-11-3017:426 reply I'm fully on the "SweeTango" hype train, which AppleRankings #1 rated breed:
https://applerankings.com/sweetango-apple-review/
SweeTango's #1 fault, which the site calls out, is that they do not store well. The recent bags I've taken home are notably less crisp and hardy than earlier in the fall.
That said, they'll still be absolutely delicious for another few weeks, highly recommend buying a bag. Trader Joe's usually carries.
By taftster 2024-11-3023:58 SweeTango is a cross between Honeycrisp and Zestar. It would be interesting to know how many highly ranked apples are also crossed with a Honeycrisp on the top of the list.
By redserk 2024-11-3018:24 SweeTango tastes great. I’ve been buying apple cider made of it for the last two autumns.
By rafram 2024-12-0112:22 I’ve gotten SweeTangos twice (in season, from Washington) and found them totally unappealing. No sourness to add interest to the flavor, not very crispy, just intense sweetness with a tiny bit of a mealy feeling.
Even if I just got duds, they fail the consistency test that honeycrisps pass.
By gammarator 2024-12-010:26 The SweeTango I had was cloyingly, almost artificially sweet. Can’t tell if it was an unlucky pick or I just have different preferences—I like an Ambrosia.
By hyper_cube 2024-12-0112:24 we put them straight into the refrigerator as soon as we get them home, and this works for any apple variety we buy, to preserve quality and flavor.
I just bought a bag from Trader Joe's and it was absolutely disgusting. Completely mealy and flavorless. My family agrees and will probably never trust my apple picking skills again.
You probably got an out of season New Zealand grown version which doesn't make the boat ride... https://applerankings.com/sweetango-apple-review/
By rafram 2024-12-0112:24 I’ve had some very gross SweeTangos grown in Washington.
This is my take as well and I've tried a ton.
A childhood friend's dad is one of the people who developed the Honeycrisp and SweeTango (and Rave/First Kiss, Zestar, etc). We always had access to the latest and zaniest variants, but the Honeycrisp was just consistently very good. Yeah, sometimes you'd find an incredible fruit punch thing, but the next day you'd try another and it was gross and mealy. Honeycrisp was always reliable.
SweeTango is also excellent and reliable but it's harder to find and more expensive.
Glad that you've found what works for your you.
At the same time, it is worth noting that not everybody likes crisp apples, so the ranking in that website is... daringly interpretive.
Yeah, I find the idea of using a rating site like this extremely bizarre. And after clicking on the link, that opinion is only further cemented by what seems to be a deliberate opinionated and sarcastic tone. I can only assume they want to court controversy for the sake of clicks.
For what it's worth, the only apples I buy, when they're local and in season, are McIntosh, which this site helpfully puts in the "pure shit" bin. That's just, well, wrong? Apples can be good without being bred for flavorless crispness like so many are today. And there's a difference between "soft" and "mealy", and good McIntosh apples are firmly (ha) on the soft side.
I like pink lady apples too, which this site rates "excellent", and honeycrisp are consistently acceptable - the Starbucks of apples - so it's not that they're making things up, but I think they are only rating apples along one axis and seem to have a thing for recent cultivars over classics and heirloom varieties.
By djur 2024-11-3022:09 It's the personal opinions of a comedian, and he does explain his rankings. I don't agree with all of his takes, but there's no such thing as an objective review, anyway.
By fma 2024-11-3023:54 The site has SugarBee sweetness of 3 out of 5...The author of the site is a comedian, so I guess one can't anything on that site seriously, at all.
"SugarBee® apples emit a sweet aroma and have high sugar content, generally reaching 14.6 Brix, compared to their parent variety honeycrisp, that reaches 13.8 Brix. "
https://specialtyproduce.com/produce/SugarBee_Apples_18673.p...
By axpy 2024-11-3020:10 I lived for some time in eastern Canada and I have very fond memories of freshly picked McIntoshes and I even dare to say they were my favorites. Fresh and crisp with a good amount of acidity that balances the sweetness beautifully. That being said, they don't age super well.
By Wowfunhappy 2024-11-3021:011 reply I mean, the author is a comedian:
> Brian Frange is a comedian and writer who has been yelling about apples for years. He started yelling about apples professionally in 2016 while working on Comedy Central’s Not Safe with Nikki Glaser while serving as co-host on the Not Safe Podcast. [...] What started as a bit revolving around his love of apples has now become a full-time job where Brian makes $700,000,000,000 per week providing apple advice for wealthy fruit enthusiasts. Brian is not in the pocket of big apple and all reviews are inarguably accurate and not corrupted by corporate influence.
https://applerankings.com/about/
It's all in good fun. Obviously if you prefer Red Delicious you're free to [strikethrough]have terrible taste[/strikethrough] disagree.
>Obviously if you prefer Red Delicious you're free to [strikethrough]have terrible taste[/strikethrough] disagree.
I made the mistake of purchasing that variety once, and learned from that experience. Fuji apples, on the other hand, do not deserve a score of 56 FFS.
Red Delicious are the canonical example of a product that was optimized for looks (and storage) over flavor and texture.
I'm told that the original Red Delicious are in fact very good. So good that we made them our Platonic ideal of "apple". And then... we targeted the wrong metric.
By mrguyorama 2024-12-0221:05 And yet.
The slight sweet-bitterness to a real fresh red delicious apple is completely unmatched by any other apple variety I've ever had. It tastes like apple. It is satisfying and juicy and doesn't overwhelm your stomach with sourness or sweetness.
I think people just don't realize how fast Red Delicious apples go mediocre and have rarely tasted the real thing.
By Tomte 2024-11-3017:36 I don‘t care much for Kanzi and Fuji and Pink Lady. To me, Braeburn is good, Boskoop is great, and Berlepsch is amazing, but sometimes hard to get outside the apple grow regions.
The list doesn't have Tentation and it has Jazz at mediocre.
I wouldn't put much trust in it, at least if you are in Europe.
Growing conditions really matter. We really like Gold Rush apples and our farmers market has three orchards who grow them but the ones from one of those vendors consistently aren’t as good, even though it’s clearly the same variety. Something about Pennsylvania vs. northern Maryland made more of a difference than I thought.
By quercusa 2024-11-3020:07 Bought some Gold Rush apples for the first time yesterday (South Mountain, PA) and really liked them - crunchy, tart, and spicy.
Its worse offense is not even mentioning many very good European apples like Cox Pippin or Mingan. Is just a list of commercial apples, many of then unknown or ignored in Europe.
Why is it an offense for an American to write about the apples available in their market?
By pvaldes 2024-11-3022:37 Not her offense, "its" offense, The worst offense from the "list of best apples" is that is clearly biased and omits some very good varieties that are well known.
By onli 2024-11-3017:52 Yeah, it goes completely against my taste (and maybe against how apples are over here)? I had only delicious Fuji apples for example, from consistency to taste (if you like sweet at least), which the site describes as utterly awful. Especially the local ones are awesome. Incomprehensible ranking for me.
So honeycrisp is the Top 40 radio of apples. Simply that which offends least.
By exmadscientist 2024-11-3019:02 More like the radio edit of your favorite track: was great, got diluted by assholes pushing it on the masses, is still great if you can find the original version you fell in love with.
Can't trust a site that has Fuji 39 points lower than honeycrisp when they are extremely similar.
By seattle_spring 2024-11-3019:412 reply I've never had a Fuji that's anywhere near as delightful as a Honeycrisp.
By snowwrestler 2024-12-016:16 I have, but only from the farmers market. Their Fujis are noticeably different (way better) from Fujis in the grocery stores.
By CarVac 2024-12-0114:10 I have... in Japan.
By quickthrowman 2024-12-0117:22 I live in MN and my preferred apple depends on the time of year, I try to get locally grown apples whenever possible by visiting orchards, or Lunds if I can’t get to an orchard.
I like First Kiss (Rave) apples in August and early September, SweeTango in September and October, and Honeycrisp at any other time. SweeTango is my favorite, you can still get them as flavorful tennis/baseball size apples in MN vs the monstrous grapefruit sized flavorless Honeycrisp apples that seem to be everywhere these days.
There are still fantastic Honeycrisp apples available with lots of flavor, just ignore the gigantic ones.
By beala 2024-12-011:48 This site has come up in conversation multiple times as if it's some sort of serious resource, but iiuc this is just one guy's opinion, and if you read the reviews, it's clear he's mostly just writing these for entertainment. Also, it's not clear how many times he's even tasted these apples and when those tastings occurred. Sometimes an apple just has a bad year!
Anyway, I'm mostly just salty that he panned the cosmic crisp. They're good this year!
By jader201 2024-12-012:55 To be clear (to respond to a few people panning the legitimacy of applerankings.com), I didn’t actually take the site super seriously, it just made me take more notice of the Honeycrisp and try it out.
That’s when I realized that they were very rarely mealy, something I’d been in search of for years.
But agree that the site is mostly intended to be a more humorous take on apples. (And, to be fair, it is quite funny.)
What is the most sour apple?
I really like granny smith apples for the sour flavor profile, but most review websites rate it poorly.
By slothtrop 2024-11-3019:17 Empire is my favorite because of it's crisp texture and semi-tartness. Granny Smith is probably next, it's the most sour one I can reliably find.
Pink lady's texture is not great and I find it too sweet.
Granny Smiths are probably the most tart generally available apple, but any cooking apple in general is usually sharper. You might also like McIntosh or even Pink Lady.
You could also go down the cider apple route or even crabapples if you really want, though they often tend to be more bitter than tart.
By bpye 2024-12-011:20 I'm a big fan of a McIntosh, and pretty easy to find in BC. The apple ranking site also rates them poorly, with which I disagree.
By dmoy 2024-11-3020:16 Granny Smith is ubiquitous. It's often difficult to get a more sour apple than a Granny Smith. Pink Lady is less sour IIRC. McIntosh or Braeburn are definitely less sour.
If you're in the Midwest (especially MN, WI, Iowa, etc) you can get Haralson, which are kinda like Granny Smith but more just straight sour.
Haralson is probably my favorite. But disclaimer, I also like eating straight lemons, so ... yea. Many people will use Haralson only for baking.
I hear that in Europe they have a few types that are more sour, idk.
By u8080 2024-11-3023:06 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonovka Very sour, but tbh not my favourite in terms of taste.
Crabapples, and all the fancy ones with red meat
And a lot of cider apples
I had no idea crabapples were safe to eat.
When I grew up, we had several crabapple trees in the yard. They very frequently bore fruit. My mom always told me these were toxic to eat, so I stayed away from them. Honeysuckle and blackberries, on the other hand...
I just googled it. It's a common myth, I suppose?
By pvaldes 2024-12-0110:27 Crabapples make an excellent jelly, that you can have also in different colors depending on the cultivar.
https://www.alamy.com/home-made-crab-apple-jelly-malus-evere...
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/40275/mary-wynnes-crabappl...
https://thequietfoodie.com/my-first-ever-crab-apple-jelly-re...
As raw fruit they are perfectly edible when mature. The flavor is a mild apple flavor, a little bland an can be sour also. As in all apples, the seeds have cyanide, but as long as you don't eat them or filter the seeds after cooking it, it will not be a problem. Just don't eat it whole.
The immature fruits are hard as a steel ball, so there is a risk of suffocation with children, but apart if this, if you discard the seeds they are perfectly edible. I ate them many times, even if I prefer to let most in the tree for the birds.
It just means wild apple trees, not a cultivated variety. Similar to picking wild blackberries, except I think they are true to seed.
By pvaldes 2024-12-0117:35 > It just means wild apple trees, not a cultivated variety.
"Wild" apples are Malus sylvestris or just feral domestic apples Malus domestica.
Crabapples comprise the rest (>30 different species) of apples and its hybrids. Malus florida from Japan is famous for its glorious blossom for example. Malus sieboldi from China or Malus bacatta from Siberia are also crabapples. Some are true to seed, but other aren't and there are many cultivars selected by blossom or fruit display.
There are some crabapples cultured specifically for culinary purposes, like Golden Hornet that bear heavy amounts of small yellow fruits. Very good for compote and jelly.
By snowwrestler 2024-12-016:09 Weird, there’s a variety at my local farm market called Crimson Crisp that is my new favorite because it is tasty and extremely crisp. But it’s not even listed on that ranking site… maybe it’s regional?
And I’ve never heard of the Cosmic Crisp, which is showing up in a lot of comments. Again, maybe regional?
By insane_dreamer 2024-12-0121:09 It also depends on when you get them. Here in the PNW, Honeycrisp apples in the fall are delicious because they're grown locally and not stored long. Just eat it as seasonal fruit and it lives up to its promise.
By Blackthorn 2024-12-0116:44 Empire has this problem. Fresh off the tree they are some of the ideal apples. After a couple weeks of storage though, they lose all that crispness and become a sad experience.
By acchow 2024-11-3018:50 I’ve eaten many mealy honeycrisp apples. Just let it sit on your counter for 2 months then try it. Discount grocery stores are often selling many-months old apples.
By Tagbert 2024-12-015:28 I’ve been very fond of yellow Opal apples recently. Very firm with a good taste.
By lotsofpulp 2024-11-3021:37 Rock it apples have been the most consistently good for me.
By mjamesaustin 2024-11-3017:115 reply This is the same story for every new variety of apple. It becomes popular because of its positive characteristics (sweetness, tanginess, juicyness, crispness), but then slowly over time it gets cultivated for mass market appeal (uniform color, shape, shelf life) and the variety loses what made it good.
The best apple variety is generally the new one. The market is strewn with the discarded remains of formerly good apples like Fuji and Gala.
By mikepurvis 2024-11-3017:212 reply My preferred apple is Mutsu, available from a few growers in the late season at my southern Ontario farmers market. According to Wikipedia it's been around since 1949, but perhaps it simply never got popular enough to face these pressures— either way, I find it consistently to be in the right place for me as far as a balance of sweet, tangy, and crispy.
By justinfrankel 2024-12-012:04 +1 here -- Mutsu are fantastic, readily available at NYC greenmarkets in the fall and into the winter, though there are pretty large differences in flavor and texture between various orchards too. Samascot is my fav.
Any idea where those could be located on the us side of the border in Detroit?
By Jgrubb 2024-12-0114:18 Aka “crispin” if that helps. Every apple farmer around here in NW NJ grows them, never seen them in a store. Also my favorite.
By fn-mote 2024-11-3020:28 Farmer’s market. Grocery store that isn’t a big chain. They’re here.
By mikepurvis 2024-11-3022:06 Given that it's a Japanese cultivar, I assume they're all over the place, you just have find a market where someone growing them has them for sale.
Or the old one, find a local orchard that sells heirloom apples! Get some Cox's Orange Pippin or some Northern Spy or some Ashmead's Kernel.
I second the cox's. This harvest I bought several of each variety in the shop and cox's was my favorite by a mile.
By notanote 2024-11-3019:22 Same here.
I can imagine growers don’t like them as much though, despite the lack of patents and trademarks. In Europe they were abundant and amazing quality last year, lasting into February. This harvest their flavour wasn’t there, many were mealy, and they were unavailable within a month. Their worst year as far as I can remember.
By pvaldes 2024-11-3021:30 Cox is a very good apple that is infamously prone to pick every apple disease known. Golden Delicious has the same problem, good flavor, disappointing as tree without using chemicals.
Rubinette is a medium sized yellow apple, streaked in reddish brown. Not particularly eye-catching and also prone to fungal diseases. But Rubinette has a secret, is a seedling of Cox x Golden delicious, and its flavor is fantastic.
Modern apples with not so sophisticated flavor but better resistance can be much more satisfactory.
By quercusa 2024-11-3020:10 Be on the lookout for Esopus Spitzenburg (maybe only in the US). It's a really tasty apple.
By jghn 2024-11-3020:27 I found the Westfield Seek-No-Further [1] this year and it's become my new favorite.
[1] https://www.scottfarmvermont.com/westfield-seeknofurther
By eszed 2024-12-0119:41 Cox's Orange Pippin is a good baking apple, as well. Holds its shape, and goes all custardy, rather than dissolving into mush.
It's not as good as a Bramley. Does anyone in the US grow those commercially? Why not?
This is a thing I love about living in WA, I get the apples a few years before everyone else. Lets me send them to friends across the US before they hit their supermarkets.
And yes really the interesting thing is they're different and new. Tho I do really like cosmics. Especially if you dry them in a food dehydrator and then powder them into whipped cream.
Same deal with cherries.
By binarymax 2024-11-3019:23 Same with Western NY - proximity to Cornell’s apple research and lots of orchards is really great. If you’re an apple fanatic WA and WNY are the places to be.
I wonder what the incentives are that make mass market qualities more attractive to growers than what consumers want. Like, I can imagine a sorta-demand curve with "sweetness etc" to "uniform color etc" along the x axis and "clearing price" or something on the y axis, and I really wonder if the most efficient price is really so far to the mass market appeal side of the curve. Or to put it another way, why can't they just grow things people want?
What people want, judging by their market behavior, is reliability. A lot of the best-tasting apples are inconsistent in quality, ship or store poorly, or have a short growing season. I love eating fresh heirloom apples, but Honeycrisps are 10% great, 80% good, and 10% disappointing, which I prefer to 30% good, 30% disappointing, and 40% unavailable.
By shermantanktop 2024-11-3022:341 reply The idea of a year-round fruit crop is a modern supermarket creation. Most food is seasonal. If a consumer are unaware of its seasonality, that’s because someone is working hard to hide that fact.
I try to enjoy asparagus when it is in season, new potatoes when they are in season, etc. Just because some crops are bred for months and months of storage doesn’t mean they actually taste great.
By maxerickson 2024-12-0114:271 reply Out season asparagus is coming on a truck from a region with a different season or plane from South America, not from a shelf.
By shermantanktop 2024-12-0117:10 No, of course it is not from cold storage; instead the produce is flying around the world so that you can have them whenever you want.
Cold storage, jets, and long-haul trucking are particularly bad for some types of produce, not so bad for others.
Anyway, I’m not fighting the modern world, I like having tomatoes in January. But this article and discussion is about how you can have good apples, or you can have year-round apples at scale, but you can’t have both. And a lot of that comes down to the supermarket training consumers to expect the same produce every week.
By ip26 2024-11-3021:02 The clearing price probably actually rises with improved color and shape, and the overhead declines with greater shelf stability. It’s not until years later that consumers slowly realize the texture and taste have gone downhill (as result of these developments) that clearing price begins to decline. So the market has a lag in response; it resembles a high value brand being sucked dry.
By bradleyjg 2024-11-3020:13 What people want when you sit them down and have them try apples side by side is different from what they want when they are in a supermarket, tired from working all day, and starring out at a sea of apples and not quite remembering which one it was they liked.
By briankelly 2024-11-3020:501 reply Enshitification. I’ve been buying honeycrisp for a while and noticed more mushiness and flat flavor recently but I didn’t realize there was a whole apple-buying meta to keep up with if you don’t want to buy garbage fruit.
Edit: All the honeycrisp in my area right now are oversized. I’m guessing because of a supplier change due to the season change?
By pvaldes 2024-11-3021:33 Oversized and without flavor? Watson, I think that we have another case of assassination by Giberellins here.
