[NAFEX] Red Delicious

Spidra Webster spidra at speakeasy.net
Thu Oct 18 04:38:14 EDT 2007


On Oct 17, 2007, at 10:13 PM, Michael Nave wrote:

> I hope future generations never know the taste of Red
> "Delicious" (and what a fraudulent name that was). It
> is almost single handedly responsible for the decline
> in apple consumption in the latter half of the 20th
> century. No one ever ate a red delicious apple and
> said "yum, I need to eat more apples." It's the worst
> tasting apple I have ever experienced. It's not a
> plain old sugary apple. It's a plain old tasteless
> apple.

Yup.  I didn't know it at the time, but it was Red Delicious that was  
responsible for me deciding "I don't like red apples".  I liked green  
apples (which, it turned out, were Pippins and then later Granny  
Smiths). But I never tasted a red apple I liked.  Since they were  
just called apples in the supermarket and not really associated with  
cultivar names, I didn't know that there were different cultivars  
that could taste very different.  It's only in the last couple years  
that I've rediscovered apples.  First, by tracking down the Newtown  
Pippins of my youth and secondly by being introduced to red or  
reddish apples that taste good.  What a surprise!

There's an orchard near here in El Sobrante that was reclaimed from  
brambles.  The new owners rehabilitated it and tracked down the  
cultivar types. It turns out the man who planted it in the '60s or so  
bought his trees from Starck Bros.  He planted Gravensteins and  
Pippins, which I find to be delicious, but I was surprised that the  
non-commercial orchard also had such wastes of space as Red  
Delicious.  I figured I had better try one to see if being grown  
organically and tree-ripening made a difference.  Although it made a  
difference, the difference was slight.  You still have an apple that  
was bred for looks and the ability to ship well.  Taste was clearly  
secondary.

Thankfully, diving into the world of home orchards, local food and  
heirloom varieties has taught me that it wasn't the color of the  
apple that made it taste bad.  Not all red apples are bad.  But Red  
Delicious is a contradiction in terms.

Megan Lynch

Berkeley, CA



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