Apple Review #19: Ruby Mac

Ruby Mac or RubyMac? I don’t know. What I do know is, the McIntosh apple — and in many cases this sport mutation of it, the Ruby Mac — is an apple people either super love or super hate, and I always think anything like that is interesting. Something that inspires strong reactions is, to me, going to be an interesting something no matter how you slice it — a book or album or apple or experience with a mix of one-star and five-star reviews is doing to be a more fascinating situation than something with a scattering of three-stars. This apple, I think, is like that for a lot of people — though I suspect a lot of the people who hate it hate some grocery store version of it that has turned into an ORB OF MEDIOCRITY in storage.

Because hey, this apple is fucking legit.

Let’s talk about it.

My review of a Ruby Mac from Manoff Orchard, PA, mid-Oct:

The color of the Ruby Mac — and many of the McIntoshes I’ve eaten — is this kind of muddy sangria red color that I really love. The shape and color of it often remind me less of an apple and more of an heirloom tomato like a Cherokee Purple or a Tommy Parmesan or a River-Drowned Winelump and okay only one of those is real I didn’t feel like Googling a bunch of tomato variants, I already have too much apple information inside my head to be healthy and sane.

The smell coming off this particular PLUMP BOY was intense, perhaps the most intense apple I done sniffed this year — the aroma was not just berry-forward but as if I was smelling the scent wafting off a bowl of crushed berries. Strawberry, yes, but blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, all the berries. So powerful that I had it in my office for 15 minutes as I went inside to get a camera and do some other quick things, and I came back in and my whole office was redolent with the aroma.

That made me worry that it was too long off the tree and was gonna be a mush-slug of an apple, just a mealy tongue-scrubbing mess —

But that worry did not come to (pun not intended until now) fruition.

Because holy fuck this was a good apple.

Crazy juice bomb apple. Like a grenade full of apple juice.

The flavor itself is vinous, which is a word people use to mean it tastes like wine — and sometimes I find that word overused, but not here. It’s not a specifically rich red like, “Ah yes, this tastes like a 2016 Tempranillo grown in the Douro Valley of Portugal under the shade of a large man that smelled strongly of Portuguese egg tarts, or pastel de nata.” It was kind of like, hey, you ever had a really good, really basic red table wine? Like that. It’s red wine up front and then, curiously, white wine on the finish, and all throughout was this really lovely berry brightness.

The texture was soft, like the Jonathan, but not so soft it was problematic, and nowhere near mealy. Honestly the texture of it made it fast to eat — I do think there’s this Venn diagram of HOW LONG AN APPLE TAKES TO CHEW vs HOW LONG IT TAKES FOR THE FLAVOR TO DISSIPATE, and ideally, the chew lasts not as long as the flavor, and that is absolutely true here. The flavor is present and assertive long after you’ve eaten the whole apple.

Really great apple. If you don’t love this apple then I don’t love you okay I’m just kidding come back it’s okay if we like different things.

Let’s call it an 8.7 and head back to camp.

Video review here.

Accidentally slo-mo video of it here.

Ruby Mac: Looks like a tomato, tastes like berries and table wine, baby