Finally, we get to truly, truly, one of my most favoritest apples: the small-but-mighty Cox’s Orange Pippin. Some real hobbit shit right here.

First, though, a brief shilling:

Scott Farm, in Vermont. This is unpaid. They are not a sponsor. I am not receiving free apples from them even though I am a bonafide applefluencer. (When the Cosmic Crisp released, I received a free box of them. That’s it. That’s the extent of my applefluencerness. IT COUNTS SHUT UP.)

They will ship apples to you. I assume this is easier and cheaper if you’re on the East Coast, but I think they ship nationwide? Don’t quote me on that. Either way, you get a really, really nicely packaged box of 12 or 18 heirloom apples — three of each of their current cultivars. It’s good stuff. I’ve been there, too, and that’s the real magic: it’s this quaint out of the way farm store and orchard. They have lunch and cider and also shit-ton of gloriously weird apples, and when I went there were a handful of dudes out there playing bluegrass. It was cool. Go there. Vermont.

(And when you do go, you can also go to Madame Sherri’s castle, which is an old staircase in the woods, and yes, I’m going to briefly turn this into a promo for me, me, me, because how else am I going to afford all these fancy fucking apples? Staircase in the Woods is on sale right now for $2.99 at any of the places where you get your digital electrobookery. Which is to say, Bookshop.org, Kobo, Amz, Apple, B&N, etc. If you want a print book, signed and personalized, as always, Doylestown Bookshop has you covered. And since I can’t stop reminding you of things, remember I’m at D-town this weekend, Sunday, with T. Kingfisher, aka Ursula Vernon, aka a very cool person and awesome author okay whew.)

Cox’s Orange Pippin was one of the first heirloom apples I tastes way back when I first started eating these rarer, stranger fruits — and it was really one of the ones that changed the game for me. A truly GOATed apple over here.

It’s not quite as old a variety as you might think, since some apples are sourced back to the 1600s — this one is late 1800s. A very British apple, even in its name. It sounds like a peculiar British expression, something you say to express exclamation. “Cox’s Orange Pippin, that’s good spotted dick!” It may come from the Ribston Pippin, who I’m pretty sure was a suitor in a Jane Austen novel. Regardless of where it comes from, it has certainly spawned a great many apple children — dozens of varieties, including but not limited to the Rubinette, the Golden Gooselump, the Laxton’s Epicure, the Nuvar Freckles, the Rosey Rumprusset, the Cobra, the Clivia, the Clarkleton Express, the Acme, the Edith Hopwood, the Millicent Barnes, the Grand Dame Activia, the William Crump, and more. I may have made some of those up. I bet you can’t easily tell which.

Anyway, fuck it, let’s eat this apple.

My review of a late September Cox’s Orange Pippin from Scott Farm, VT:

A pineapple fucked a pear and somehow made a baby that looks like an apple. That is the Cox’s Orange Pippin apple.

It is a weirdly sunshiney tropical apple, which I assume gave early Brits the fits, since they were used to eating fog and barnacles and sheep guts, and then suddenly along comes an apple that tastes like the antithesis to scurvy.

It’s crunchy and crispy and juicy. Sweet and tart is in, for me, perfect balance. Slicks your lips. Tingles the tongue.

The skin is orange, and if you don’t believe me, this is a color picker grab from the middle of the apple —

And if I drop the saturation of orange out of the apple, you get:

See? Orange. Doesn’t taste like it, but rather, exhibits the colors of it — that said, there’s also no denying the tropical, almost citrus component to it.

I’d usually give this a ten — it is for me pretty much the perfect apple. But in this instance, I’d say I was hoping it would be a scootch crunchier. And also, in the aftertaste was this odd umami MSG flavor that lingered a bit — not exactly unpleasant, but a little unusual, which let’s say dented the apple’s perfect score a bit. I’m being picky, but fuck it, that’s the whole point of this — there is the chance I will eat a different Cox’s Orange Pippin, even from the same batch, and it’ll get me to a perfect glorious ten, and the angels did sing.

(I note here too that while these reviews are purely for the “eating-of-of-hand” apple snack gang experience, this also makes for a solid pie, cobbler, sauce. But why would you when you can just shove it in your mouth.)

So, yeah. It’s a 9 out of 10 for this guy.

Video here.

(Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush)

Cox’s Orange Pippin: eat the apple and you can’t help but say, “Cox’s Orange Pippin, thassa real corker of an apple, innit!”

So, the other day, I was sitting at my desk and a Facetime call came in from a friend who I won’t identify here, I’ll just say his name is — gosh, what’s a good entirely made-up name? — Dave Turner. We’ll call him Dave Turner.

Normally, I would not answer a random Facetime call from anyone. I won’t even answer a phone call. Gosh, you answer the phone, you might actually have to talk to a person, and I did not become a creepy writer in the woods just so I can talk to *shudder* other humans. You want to speak to me with your voice and my voice, you need to pre-schedule that shit in advance. Otherwise, leave me alone to sit in the dark, whispering to apples.

Anyway, I answered because it’s Dave Turner, which is totally not his real name, and the aforementioned Dave Turner was at an apple orchard and demanded the services of an on-call apple sommelier, or perhaps, an orchard shepherd. And I was glad to be of service, and we went on a Facetime tour of many crates of tasty Hudson Valley apples, but I think what struck me was how many of those I’d never even heard of. And clearly I am no mere apple novitiate — I am no pomological rube. I know a lot of apples! Me and a lot of apples, we’re pals. And this was still a new-to-me slate.

That excited me. It revivified me. My apple journey is far, far from over, it seems, and it truly continues today with another apple that is entirely new to me, courtesy of Scott Farm in Vermont:

The Maiden’s Blush.

Apparently, a popular apple in the 1700s in New Jersey. No pork roll, just Maiden’s Blush apples all the way down. Common in the earliest markets in Philadelphia. Also used as an early American “courting orb,” whereupon a man would gift a woman he fancied with something round and precious — an apple, a doll’s head, a bread boule, a signed World Series baseball. And the Maiden’s Blush was a popular choice, because the apple was quite randy, often muttering horny little epithets at those who gripped it tightly and thus, obviously, it made maidens blush okay listen this part might not be true, who can say, nothing matters anymore.

My review of a Maiden’s Blush apple from Scott Farm (VT), late Sept:

Have you ever made a sandcastle? Have you ever, while the sand is still wet — wet enough for the sand to be packed together — just taken a big ol’ bite?

That’s what this feels like in your mouth. A wet sandcastle! What delight.

The stark white flesh is a dry, very-not-juicy landscape of just-moist apple dust, and it mostly has no crunch when you bite it; though if you really get vigorous with it you can manifest a slight krrnnch as you get in there. The apple-meat turns to slop pretty fast while the skin remains — so you kind of milk the flesh from your mouth while still chewing the USPS priority mail envelope that once enrobed said flesh, and it’s not super fun to do this.

The apple’s saving grace, I suppose, is its flavor: it’s not particularly interesting, but there’s a politely assertive flavor of vanilla and elderflower. A spark of tart. A touch of sweet. It’s not going to kick you in the mouth with its complexity, but it will definitely hold the elevator for you. It’ll let you ahead in line at the grocery store if you only have a few items. It’ll say a quiet gesundheit if you sneeze, even when it has never met you before. It’s a nice flavor!

A nice flavor unfortunately married to the texture of potting soil. Good for applesauce! I’d say maybe less great for pie. And less less great for eating out of hand. But very good to serve as a courting orb to impress the one you love.

Whaddya gonna do.

Oh, one more thing it has going for it — it smells nice. Even before you bite into it, it exudes this flowery, appley aroma that is pleasing. So maybe just buy a bushel of these and let them perfume your area and then throw them away.

The taste gets it up to a 2.5 outta 10.

Video here.

(Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland)

Maiden’s Blush: Wet sad sandcastle heralds the death of summer, but at least it smells nice, so stick a wick in it and use it as a candle

Reviewing apples is a fundamentally silly thing because of course all things like this are subjective. Further, apples are rarely the same from apple to apple, especially when you factor in things like where you got it, when you got it, when you ate it, what tree it came from, is it demon-possessed, is the apple a murmuring egg, did the apple inspire you to join an orchard cult where you wassail the trees and wish for them to grow up and through your foes?

It’s why I’m noting where and when I got these apples — and when possible I’ll also re-review the apples from different orchards at different times of year. Because I know for sure a Cortland from Wegman’s in January is a whole different animal than the Cortland I ate the other day.

The scoring itself is another silly thing, as if all of life can be neatly encapsulated in a score of one through ten. Or worse, through the current internet-scoring-du-jour of S-TIER through F-TIER. (Though real-talk I’m a sucker for those charts where you organize things in those rankings, shut up.)

Still, we love to review and rank and rate things so here I am, doing exactly that. (There’s a website out there already that does this — I think it’s called Apple Rankings? I hate it so much. It’s very funny and I don’t hate it because of that, I hate it because it’s so wrong about so many apples. I want to bite it.)

My ratings are pretty much vibes-based, as are most ratings — I do not have particular criteria I’m using to chart that score. As Rhett and Link might say, this is gut check time. I’m of a mind that five is the middle, and marks the point where I at least roughly like or appreciate an apple — below that, I don’t like it, above it, I do like it. And everything beyond that is pure chaos.

With that said, we go today to review the Cortland apple — a classic New York apple, perhaps the classic New York apple. A Macintosh and Ben Davis cross, it’s one I haven’t had luck with yet, really, so let’s give it another gooooooo.

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My review of a Cortland apple, yoinked from Manoff Orchard (here in Bucks County PA) in late Sept:

I’ve heard the Cortland praised many a time, and each time I’ve consumed a Cortland, I’ve disliked it mightily. Which has felt jarring to me — suggesting I am either so out of step with everyone else’s tastes that I might as well be E.T. (though even he liked Reese’s Pieces, the little bastard). I mean, I’m sure some of this is pure New York pride, right? You can’t fuck with the Cortland. It’s unimpeachable in its home state. It’s as untouchable as a bodega BEC, as a bagel, as a pizza rat.

But every Cortland I’ve had has been mealy or dull, a loveless and lifeless lump — pretty, perhaps, but ultimately a real Sluggo of an apple. Where, pray tell, is a Cortland that is more Nancy? That has more personality? More attitude, more swagger?

Well, I think I found one.

Now, when I say I found one, I don’t mean I found the best apple of my life — given some praise I hear for the apple, I’d argue what I ate was still a little underwhelming, missing that mark by a good bit.

But still, quite tasty.

The skin, a bit forbidding. But the bite was a deep rattling bone-crunch, and pleasing for that sound — there is truly an atavistic satisfaction in the sensation of that kind of crunch. I tried to hint at this in Black River Orchard, how that the sensation of chomping into a truly crunchy apple heralds the distant vibe of biting through something or someone that has opposed you — like snapping through the fingerbones of an enemy, like hearing the caveman crunch of a skull under a rock, culminating in the the subsequent feeling of conquest and satiety. (Just me? Ha ha ha I’m kidding don’t worry about it please don’t call the authorities, I’m definitely not running around the neighborhood crushing heads with rocks just to feel something, anything at all.)

There’s a good balance to the sweetness and the tartness — probably a 60/40 split with more tartness than sugar. The sweetness is light and airy, the tartness a temporary pop, and between the two is sandwiched some kind of unidentifiable funky spice. It was almost a lavender, herbs-de-provence thing — savory and strange. And then at the end of it, a hit of like, Port wine. That, probably vinousness from the Macintosh? Sure.

The apple flesh (apfelfleisch) was coarse, juicy, snowy white.

It’s a nice apple. Nothing you’d ululate about in cult-song, but nice.

I assume up to this point most of the Cortlands I had sucked because they just weren’t from the right place, and were left too long off the tree. Some apples don’t love time off the branch where others genuinely improve like wine. This one wasn’t from NY, but hey, close enough. It was a solid apple.

Call it a 7 out of 10, and onward we go.

The video here.

(Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet)

Cortland: nothing you’d ululate about in cult-song, but nice

Holy fucking shit, look at this Shrek-Ass Apple.

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Before we begin, a note on how (and why) I’m reviewing these.

The why, first. Once upon a time, there was a land called Twitter, and in this festive, deranged realm, I spent a lot of time shouting my insane apple reviews to any who would hear. I did literally hundreds of them. It was silly, but fun, and we all had some fun together. And then the land called Twitter suffered a tectonic event, a cataclysm that broke it into pieces, and from the shattered fundament arose the dread land of X, which was awful, so I got the hell out of there and nuked the site from orbit. Which is to say, I also nuked my apple reviews in their entirety.

So, I want to rebuild that — and not just on Instagram, where I tend to post my “live reaction” apple mukbang “apple snack gang” reviews, because I don’t own Instagram, and a shitty person does own it, and I don’t want some digital serf just cultivating land for my social media monarchs. I own this space and feel like, hey, fuck it, let’s bring the apple reviews back, let’s formalize them, let’s codify them, let’s get them on THE BLOG because

THE BLOG IS ETERNAL

THE BLOG IS ALL

ALL HAIL BLOG

Or something.

As to how I review these: I eat the first bites of the apple on camera, post that shit to Instagram, and then I actually eat the rest of the apple on my own, in the quiet introverted solitude of my weird writer’s shed. I will peel the apples first, usually — sometimes the skin is a wonderful part of the apple, but honestly, I’m there for the APPLE MEAT. I’ll eat it, take notes as I go, and try to think really hard about what I’m tasting, which sometimes is “I taste muscat grape and paperback book paper and the wanderlust of a lonely but still-horny widow,” and other times is, “wow this tastes like an apple, you guys.” I’m sometimes sophisticated, other times, I’m just a dull penny, and we’re all going to have to deal with that.

I am not an expert on anything.

(I did write a book about apples but it’s fictional, and the apples in it are Quite Evil, so if you want Quite Evil Apples, then Black River Orchard awaits you. It’s also a very good Fall Times Spooky Season book — combining both the horror and the autumnal thing, if you are into such combinations.)

I’ll then start to keep these as a persistent list here on the site, linking to all these individual reviews. Look for that starting up maybe later this week!

Okay, that’s done, let’s review Shrek’s Ballsack — uh, I mean, this totally normal and not-at-all-scrotal apple.

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My review, Knobbed Russet from Scott Farm (VT), late September:

The Knobbed Russet.

Also known as: Knobby Russet, who I’m pretty sure was a kid I used to play kickball with. Also called the Winter Russet, the Old Maid. I might add a few more names, myself: Bubonic Orb, or Frankenstein’s Kidney. Or maybe Satan’s Canker. Belial’s Bezoar? Whatever.

The last time I ate one of these was a great sadness. It tasted like depression. It had the texture of clumpy kitty litter. Sad dust. Moist sand. Nothing good. I don’t hate a soft apple, though it’s not my preference — but I really don’t like biting into an apple and getting a mealy-shit blah-smear on my tongue. And that’s what happened the last time I had one of these.

That did not happen this time.

This time! No mealy mush! No apple gruel piped into a lumpy skin bag!

We’ll be generous and begin with the taste, which is mostly pleasing. I’m used to russets being a little more interesting, overall, in which I mean there’s usually some complexity in the taste, and this is more a straight-line to its end flavor. When I barely had bitten it, and I mean my tooth had only just punctured ITS DREAD ARMOR I mean its skin, I was immediately greeted by a pinprick of powerful tartness. Like an electric thumbtack. Bzzt.

And the flavor bore that out — what I got from that was a strong lemon sorbet slash lemon candy vibe. Which is not unpleasant if you’re a person who likes sour candy! You eat this and your lips sing after, like you just ate a handful of Sour Patch Kids. It’s assertive, just not particularly nuanced.

The flesh itself — that densely-packed, finely-grained thing is beloved by some though I’m not necessarily one of them. It’s also not really a juicy apple — it’s not some dry sphincter, either, but it’s not bringing much to the party by way of juice. Still: the flesh is fine! The meat is good!

All that said, I think it behooves us to talk about its appearance. Trust me! I’d love to live in a world where we don’t have to be so shallow with our apples, but it’s actually a little relevant — ugly fruits and vegetables don’t get to live in the grocery store aisles, okay? People don’t buy them because we’re vain, horrible creatures who value looks first and everything else a distant second.

And admittedly, when I see this apple, my first thought is, “That barnacled sphere is definitely haunted. It has seen some shit. It may have Lyme disease. It might be an egg. Some foul beast will definitely emerge from that bungled scrotum and drag me back to its mother’s lair in the fens.” It’s vainy and weird — like if Shrek were possessed by Venom. But, to be fair, the longer you look at it, the more fascinating it becomes. This leper potato is its own creature, and it’s kind of beautiful, in a “swamp bolus” or “wasp gall” kind of way.

It isn’t fun to eat, though. Chewing that skin is like eating a wallet and all the money in that wallet. It’s a hard, unforgiving affair. Like being married to a coal miner. I don’t recommend it. Peel it to eat it. Which will be hard because it’s like peeling a rock, but you’ll get there if you put your back into it.

Anyway! This is a good apple. It’s a fugly one, but tasty in its way.

Let’s call it a 6.5, shall we?

(Watch me eat it here)

(Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp)

Knobbed Russet: Sure it looks like the nutsack of a dying dryad but eat it

Behold: the Crimson Crisp apple.

You may think, “Ah, this is another Honeycrisp deviant,” but nay, it is not a child of Honeycrisp, nor a mutated sport — same last name, but different parents. It in fact predates the Honeycrisp by (don’t quote me on this) about 20 years in release though maybe only three in actual development. Further, the Crimson Crisp was once known by the more romantic name–

*checks notes*

Coop 39.

*clears throat*

I do feel like this was an early step on the “let’s finally put Red Delicious in the grave” journey, whereupon America decided it needed new and better apples. And this gets us a good part of the way there. This feels like a solid first step on the “apples shouldn’t be indestructible Liar Fruit that we suggest is both Red and Delicious but is mostly Purple and Shitty* transformation, and sure, I’m here for it, mostly. (Less here for the fact most heirlooms have been kicked to the margins of food history in favor of apples that can travel to and exist in grocery stores coast-to-coast.)

Regardless, I’m to understand there might be a convoluted mix of apples that went into this — Jonathan? Rome Beauty? But also —

*checks notes*

Crandall.

Which is apparently an apple.

Crandall.

Crandall.

I definitely call dibs on using that as a character’s name someday. Some kind of corrupt CEO, maybe. Or a foot fetishy sorcerer. Hell, maybe just a hunchbacked gravedigger. CRANDALL, SECURE THE BRAIN. Anyway.

Let’s review.

My review of the Crimson Crisp apple, procured from Manoff Orchard (PA, Bucks County) in late September, blah blah blah:

Well, this apple is a fucking flavor journey, let me tell you.

I’ve had it before and I don’t recall the, ahhhm, complex roller coaster that whipped my tastebuds around my mouth when eating this apple. I honestly expected it just to be pretty much a line drive down the middle — you know, crisp, crunchy, sweet-tart, pleasing (if not memorable), totally serviceable, okay goodbye, what’s next.

Then I ate it.

On that first bite: hit of rose. Which, okay, not entirely unexpected. Apples are related to the rose, after all. I’m used to a floral hit with some apples.

Second immediate sensation in that first bite: horseradish.

Yeah, fuckin’ horseradish. In my opinion, one of God’s greatest mistakes, and one of the Devil’s cruelest roots — a spicy dirt log, a zesty shit potato, just a horrible thing, the horseradish. Some people love it and that’s fine, people can be wrong monsters if they want to be.

So, to clarify here, what I tasted in this apple was not the spicy part of the horseradish — at no point did it try to burn the hairs out of my nose. But rather, there’s a deeper taste to horseradish (what I might argue is the radishy part): an earthy funky miasma, and I got that with this apple. Earthy unzesty horseradish whiff wafting through my mouth.

I blame the Crandall, obviously. Whenever I taste something strange in an apple, something complex and mildly upsetting, I may simply refer to that as “the Crandall taste.” As in, “oh, you can really taste the Crandall in there.” And when people act like they don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll just laugh in a dismissive, pompous fashion, as if to say, “You fool, you prole, you lumpish commoner, doesn’t know what a Crandall taste is.”

And then, then—

The third act of this flavor journey (and here I’ll remind you this is first bite):

Barley.

Like, malted barley.

Then, all that fades away and you’re hit with something altogether more appley. The sweetness, the tartness, huzzah and hooray. Got a deep crunch, fairly satisfying. Juicy, not crazy juicy. There’s a faint cantaloupe finish. And then, for the epilogue of this flavor journey —

The smell.

Once I bit into it, I took a sniff–

And smelled hay.

Not fresh hay! Not grassy alfafa. No, like dried hay. The kind you’d feed to a horse. Yeah, I don’t know either.

So: hidden in this seemingly normal apple was, for me, a very weird apple.

I admire that. I admire the complexity of this apple. It’s fucking goofy. It’s all over the place. At the same time, it can’t help being what it wants to be. Cue the Sammy Davis Jr I gotta be meeeee. Just the same, it also made me wonder if I was having a stroke, and it’s also not an apple I’m going back to anytime soon?

So — 6.5.

Onward we go. Bumping it to a 6.5 I think from the 6 I gave it here in this video. Does anybody watch those? Sound off if you do. Also sound off in the comments if there’s an apple you want me to find and review, yeah?

Crimson Crisp: Hay is for horses, and hay is also for horseradish apples.