Apple Review #5: Cortland

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