Apple Review #21: Esopus Spitzenburg

Let’s talk about complex, complicated flavors. I think tasting notes are often unexpectedly, unintentionally hilarious, and I love them with all my heart and here’s why: they exist somewhere between the poles of earnest and insane.

Often the more pretentious — and/or expensive — you get with a thing, the more absolutely deranged the tasting notes. Like, let’s say with coffee, right? I am a fan of the current generation of small-batch small-farmer-grown coffees that come from smaller roasters, and I genuinely like tasting a coffee and checking the tasting notes — today’s coffee from Little Wolf roasters said my coffee had notes of chocolate cake, and at the moment I ground it up I was like, yup, that’s chocolate cake. If you give me an Ethiopian coffee with notes of blueberry, I am the giddiest boy in Giddytown when that coffee actually tastes like a juicy berry bomb.

But I’ve also bought some pricier coffees where the tasting notes listed are something a poet mad on laudanum came up with on a hallucinated deadline, right? Oh, really? This coffee tastes like autumnal longing, used bookstores, and pawpaw fruits? That coffee tastes like a spa day, a cumulonimbus cloud, and owlbear dreams? No it fucking does not. C’mon. C’mon. And wines — wines are even funnier to me because I am pretty taste-blind when it comes to wines. I’m not saying I can’t taste a cheapy shit wine — I often can. But beyond that bracket, I can buy any ten dollar bottle of red or white off the shelf and I’m pretty good to go. I might detect some of the more pedestrian flavors like cherry or chocolate in a red or tropical fruit in a white, but after that, you’ve lost me. And paying more for wine has almost never rewarded me, because in the land of wine, I am a foolish chump.

So, I do find it interesting when apple tasting notes from folks leave the realm of the sane and enter, just like, bizarrotown — and yet, at the same time, I often taste some pretty bizarre things in apples. We talk about spice in apples and that doesn’t mean heat — it literally means that in some apples you will taste, perhaps inexplicably, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice, ginger. There might be floral notes like rose, elderflower, lavender. I’ve tasted some pretty funky things, too — licorice/fennel/anise, for one. I’ve tasted other fruits! Lots of apples are reminiscent of other fruits, which sort of feels insane, right? “This apple tastes like pineapple, even though pineapples don’t taste like apples.” THIS APPLE TASTES LIKE A PEAR is a categorically weird sentiment, like ‘this hamburger tastes like fish’ or ‘this Snickers tastes like a hot dog.’ And yet, I’ve eaten a lot of apples that taste like pears — but curiously zero pears that taste like apples. You might get dessert flavors (vanilla, honey, caramel) or candy flavors (bubblegum, banana runts, SweeTarts). You could taste some really unpleasant things — I’ve tasted pickle brine and gym-sock sweat. I’ve tasted musky musty tastes. You just never know.

Though I think one of my favorite things is when you eat an apple and it’s just like, “This tastes like apple.” Unfettered apple. Uncomplicated apple.

Pure, uncut apple. The apple’s apple. Appleman in Appletown.

And that always feels weird when you eat one of those because so often we’re used to this complicated architecture of flavors — an orchestra of curious tastes strumming and drumming and singing and occasionally bleating together, and then along comes the apple’s apple, which is just one oboe honking and tooting, and it’s still the greatest thing you’ve heard. “That oboe can fucking oboe,” you say to the guy next to you, and he nods, because what else is there to even say?

So, apples are like that, sometimes.

Sometimes an apple can just really fucking apple.

Anyway, I say all of this because my local orchard had a somewhat popular heirloom apple — but one they in the past only used for cider! — the New York-state-born Esopus Spitzenburg, which to me sounds like the fancy name an Octopus takes. YES HELLO I AM THE OCTOPUS CALLED ESOPUS SPITZENBURG, THIS IS MY WIFE, EVAPUS DARGLETON, NO WE DO NOT TAKE EACH OTHER’S NAMES FOR OCTOPUSES ARE INDIVIDUAL CREATURES, HOW DARE YOU. NOW PLEASE SAY HELLO TO OUR SON, OVOPUS GRUNDLESTEIN.

It was also Thomas Jefferson’s favorite apple but hey, whatever. I believe it’s also quite difficult to grow, and didn’t actually manage to grow in Virginia, which I’m sure made Thomas Jefferson sad, but good, fuck that guy.

This apple — sometimes called Spitz, like a nickname from someone in the Great Gatbsy — is often regarded as quite excellent, though I’ve had some bad examples. And it’s also often called… complex in flavor. Is it? Was it? What did my mouth say?

Let’s review.

My review of Manoff’s Esopus Spitzenburg, mid-Oct:

God, the amazing crunch on this thing. Actually, sorry, I feel like I must descend into Internet-speak on this one:

It had cronch.

That’s the sound it made when I bit into it.

(You can see that here if so inclined.)

BIG CRONCH, then crazy juice damming the mouth. And no delay on flavor — the flavor is a wave crashing hard against the seawall of your tongue. This is a big-flavored apple. Unfuckwithable. Unquestioning sweetness lands at the same time as the flash-bang of tartness. Dense flesh. Nice skin. (This is also how I advertise myself on the dating apps. Dense flesh. Nice skin. Hey ladies. And by dating apps, I mean iNaturalist.)

This is also… a pretty appley-apple.

There are some complex flavors — a bit of strawberry and guava, and lavender that I found present when I ate the skin, not present when I didn’t.

I’ve read reports from folks where this was a mushy, sloppy apple — even mealy. But mine was toothsome, almost to the point of being chewy. That and a lingering tobacco aftertaste are the only things from having me rate this higher and maybe even ending up the best apple of the batch so far.

Still — astonishingly good, top marks, Esopus, top marks.

And by top marks, I mean a 9.0 out of 10, huzzah and hooray.

p.s. it’s National Apple Day so HAPPY APPLE DAY TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE, which better be you, don’t make me come over there and urgently push an apple into your open maw, and yes I make exceptions for those with OAS, that’s not your fault, God has cursed you and so we must destroy God

Esopus Spitzenburg: Big personality but doesn’t crave the spotlight, needlessly humble in the face of staggering talent, occasionally a bit weird, the Nick Offerman of apples, shut up it just makes sense

Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Opalescent, Orleans Reinette, Black Gilliflower, Red Delicious Double Feature, Jonathan, Ruby Mac, Crimson Topaz