Apple Review #29: Roxbury Russet

Apples have a season. We don’t necessarily think of it like that, because in a grocery store, all things are available always, which is an illusion conjured by our large (and mostly successful, and pretty functional) agricultural complex. It’s good that a lot of produce is available year-round! People need to eat and it’s good that they have a lot of choice in what they get to eat. Otherwise winter would be like, WELP, TIME TO GO DOWN THE BEET-AND-TURNIP AISLE AGAIN TO SEE IF THEY HAVE GOOD BEETS AND TURNIPS. OH SHIT, THEY GOT A SPECIAL ON ORNAMENTAL KALE. TIME TO FLENSE THE COLON!

That said, I do think it’s good to remind ourselves that apples have their time, and that time is now — though we are coming to a rough close of the season, too. By Thanksgiving, it’s pretty much done. Apples are’t necessarily done-done by then, though — they aren’t falling off trees anymore, but some apples are quite good as keepers. In fact, some apples are better when kept for a few weeks, even a couple months. The Goldrush, coming likely in a couple-few weeks, is truly one of my favorites — it’s not particularly good right off the tree, unlike many apples. Rather, it is well-deserved by its time in storage, where it develops all these great flavors.

Other good keeper apples: Arkansas Black, Ashmead’s Kernel, Tydeman’s Late Orange, Red Elf, Baldwin, Black Oxford, Cranch’s Speckle Hen, Stayman, Bryson’s Seedling Cannon Pearmain, Egremont Russet, Possum Delight, Pitmaston Pineapple, The Charlie, Cane Corso, Rough-Faced Shag, and the Blacktwig. I’m definitely not making any of those up. *coughs into hand*

Anyway, this is my favorite point in the apple season, I think — a lot of the late-season (aka winter apples) that drop tend to be more interesting, better lasting, and altogether tastier.

So the question is, does today’s Roxbury Russet pass that test?

My review of a Roxbury Russet from Scott Farm (VT), late-Oct:

Russet apples tend to be odder apples, which is one of the reasons I appreciate them. They trend sweeter, which normally I don’t like, but the funkier presentation of flavors present in most russets balances that out for me. They’re just weird. Russets are forever the weird kid, the one some people make fun of but when you get to know the weird kid that weird kid is also pretty fucking awesome and he’ll invite you to play D&D with him and he also knows a lot of facts about narwhals and supernovas.

As a russet, the Roxbury Russet is appropriately an odd little apple, though perhaps not as distinctly odd as many of its russeted peers. It’s certainly not as odd as the Knobbed Russet, which is definitely some kind of ogre testicle masquerading as fruit. And it’s probably not as overtly interesting as a Golden Russet, which I tend to like quite a lot and often has expressions of some interesting flavors like black licorice.

This is a dry, scholarly apple — it’s russeted skin is definitely elbow patches and tweed. But it’s sweet, too, which I think is a nice counter to that, which indicates a scholarly apple who is a bit cheeky, as well. Dry humor, but not mean, you know? It’s a dense, compressed apple — all that wisdom it contains, one supposes — and is high in tannins, which is to say it gives you that feeling you get with certain wines where it dries you mouth out even as you drink it. This apple feels like it’s Daniel Day Lewis yelling I drink your milkshake, I drink it right up at you as you chew it.

The skin is of course a russet’s skin, which is to say it has its own presence and will not be ignored. But it’s also not terrible, for a russet, and is nice enough, though I did find that, just as the Ribston Pippin had a “used bookstore” flavor, the skin in particular here carried the scent esters of an antique store. Like, if you’ve ever been in an antique store, I find the smell to be distinct — that commingling of dust, and wood oil, and haunted dolls, and the ghost of a cat who once lived there. And that “taste” is there in the apple, but really, only carried forward by and in the skin.

Oh! Apple facts time? Apple facts time. The Roxbury Russet is not only an odd little apple, but also reportedly the oldest apple in America. Er, not the oldest surviving apple — it’s not like I ate a 400-year-old cursed apple, some kind of mummy fruit. I just mean, it’s reportedly the first true American variety, trackable back to the 1600s when, and I shit you not, someone chucked an apple core from a European variety onto the ground and fucked off, and up from the seeds grew the Roxbury Russet. How does one even track that sort of thing? How does one obtain the knowledge of this very particular, peculiar non-story from 400 years in the past? Has John Green been time traveling again? Hard to say. One assume it’s purely apocryphal and bullshit, but hey, sure, if someone drop-kicked an apple core into the understory and up grew the first proper American apple, so be it.

That feels pretty ‘America’ to me.

Anyway. This apple. It’s good, if not earth-shattering. I prefer the Golden Russet but I don’t have one of those, so fuck me, I guess.

Feels like a 6.5 outta 10.

I drink your milkshake, I mean eat this apple, here.

Roxbury Russet: Not only a sweet little funky chonker of an apple, but also my drag name