little apples
September 20, 2018 3:42 AM   Subscribe

Somewhere in the Yarra Valley, a secretive orchardist has developed a little apple-but now needs to find a way to pass this on.
The orchardist doesn’t like the term ‘miniature’ or ‘mini’. Forget ‘tiny’. Same goes for ‘dwarf’. ‘Baby’ is unacceptable. (“Nobody eats babies.”) ‘Fairy’ he particularly hates.

“No, see, they’ve all got connotations,” he says.

For him, the word has always been ‘little’.
On the search for appropriate apple trees:

“It had to have apples in it, to see what size they were. And sometimes you’d come a gutser* because they’d turn out to be conventional apples with no water and no fertiliser and no thinning so they’d just grown pretty small.”

Come a gutser: failure (gutser or gutsa is a heavy fall or failure)
posted by freethefeet (30 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
If a little apple took all the flavor of a big apple and packed it into something 1/4 the size and left me with bite after limited bite of apple amazingness, I'd be all over that.

I don't see the article mentioning anything about the flavor of the apples, just the size.

So, interesting article, glad to read, thanks for posting. Not sure what the takeaway is, though.
posted by hippybear at 3:54 AM on September 20, 2018 [5 favorites]


‘Baby’ is unacceptable. (“Nobody eats babies.”)

Maybe it's a different story in Australia, but in the US we've got baby carrots, baby spinach, baby bok choi, baby watermelons, etc.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:43 AM on September 20, 2018 [4 favorites]


Though those baby carrots are really just big carrots cut down on a lathe, so they're really adult baby carrots.

Ew.
posted by sonascope at 4:53 AM on September 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


Rock Steady: "but in the US we've got baby carrots, baby spinach, baby bok choi, baby watermelons,"

baby back ribs
posted by chavenet at 5:01 AM on September 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


No, those come from babies.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:23 AM on September 20, 2018 [8 favorites]


I used to look forward to the brief lady apple season as a child in New York. More information. It's hard to find now.
posted by Botanizer at 5:48 AM on September 20, 2018


Now, in the US, fetal carrots... that would be a whole ‘nother story...
posted by mondo dentro at 5:48 AM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


We've already got a small apple packed with amazingness: the Cox's Orange Pippin.

I've pretty much only ever endured fruit, at best, but a fresh (rattly seeds!) crate of Cox's is not safe near me. They're small enough that a child's hand wraps round them, bite and sweet juice bursts out running down face and wrist; so seasonal, so rare now.
posted by scruss at 5:54 AM on September 20, 2018 [5 favorites]


I've always been fascinated by the Cox's Orange Pippin since reading Roald Dahl as a child (I think he rhapsodizes about them in "Danny, Champion of the World" if I recall correctly) but I've never tried one. "Little apples" also made me remember the "rose apples" I enjoyed in Thailand, which are not actually apples but were delicious and apparently do not travel well enough to ever be found in Canada.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 6:13 AM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Lovely article, really enjoyed reading it. Thank you for posting!
posted by merriment at 6:52 AM on September 20, 2018


I'm a big believer in small apples. The size of the gigantic Honey Crisps and the like always deter me.

scruss you're in Canada right? Have you seen the Cox's Orange Pippin here? I only know them via friends in the UK.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:09 AM on September 20, 2018


this struck me:
Though he doesn’t eat fruit (“Never have, even as a child.”), the orchardist knows the subtleties of the little apple by touch and sight.
what strange occupation choice for someone who doesn't eat fruit. I guess he isn't worried about getting high on his own supply.
posted by jrishel at 7:44 AM on September 20, 2018 [5 favorites]


I've never seen a Cox's Orange Pippin in Canada. I grew up in Scotland, and they were the fruit mythologized by my father.
posted by scruss at 8:08 AM on September 20, 2018


There used to be a local orchard that grew them, but I just looked up the website a minute ago and I see they're no longer on the list of varieties available. I think it was always a low-yielding apple for the orchard.
posted by sardonyx at 8:16 AM on September 20, 2018


If you're anywhere near Oxford (UK, that is), the Wolvercote Community Orchard has their Apple Day on October 7th.

They've got over 40 varieties of apple in the garden, some quite rare, and it is a wonderful place to visit. Last time we attended I had some of the finest apples I've ever tasted, so I'm looking forward to going back this year and bringing a few bags home.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 8:48 AM on September 20, 2018


They sell half-sized apples at the local farmers market as "lunchbox" apples aimed at kids who can't polish off a honey crisp the size of their head in one sitting.
posted by GuyZero at 9:05 AM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I've never seen a Cox's Orange Pippin in Canada

They used to sell apple juice from that variety at Loblaws. But I've never seen the actual apples for sale.
posted by GuyZero at 9:06 AM on September 20, 2018


Speaking of miniaturized fruits, if you can get your hands on a box of Kiwi Berries this fall, try them! We get these in our fruit CSA, and they're slightly sweet, sour, and are similar but not quite like a kiwi. They also look super cute.
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 9:12 AM on September 20, 2018


sonascope: Though those baby carrots are really just big carrots cut down on a lathe, so they're really adult baby carrots.

In the USA baby carrots are fake, but in the UK they are just small carrots.
posted by memebake at 9:19 AM on September 20, 2018


They sell half-sized apples at the local farmers market as "lunchbox" apples aimed at kids who can't polish off a honey crisp the size of their head in one sitting.

I’m totally the target market for mini apples. Grocery store apples are huge! More than half of one makes me feel oogity.
posted by deludingmyself at 9:29 AM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't see the article mentioning anything about the flavor of the apples, just the size.

...

Though he doesn’t eat fruit (“Never have, even as a child.”), the orchardist knows the subtleties of the little apple by touch and sight.

Given that he has a serious smoking habit, I wouldn't trust him to evaluate the flavor of anything anyway.

I found it a strange story. I hope it works out for him, and I hope the apples are good, but this:

He invented an apple, dammit. Like God himself.

No he didn't. He didn't even find it, his best friend did:

But his best friend knew where there was [a little apple tree].

This was the product of perseverance and luck, but not invention. Also, for all the talk about secrecy and the importance of exclusivity, one wonders where that best friend is in all this.
posted by jedicus at 9:58 AM on September 20, 2018 [8 favorites]


I don't see the article mentioning anything about the flavor of the apples, just the size.
The article is also weirdly incurious—like this question "what about little pears?" and the answer "they've been done, strangely enough". Yeah, but Seckel pears (which are indeed little) are very good.

This is pretty weird:
“At the moment you’ve got the exclusivity of the one I found and hopefully the parent tree I got it from has now carked it or disappeared off the face of the earth, so it’s nowhere else but here.”
So he "invented" the little apple by finding a little apple tree and cultivating it, and hoping that the original has died. He appropriated it. Fine; it sounds like a lot of work. But …

(Also the prose, and especially the coda, of this story are godawful; overwrought and precious. But it is very modish and has been for a while.)
posted by kenko at 10:01 AM on September 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


I would also be so in to good, widely available little apples. There's a few wild apple trees in my area that have decent little apples. They're definitely on the baking or cider side, but they're still cute, delicious little eating apples.

I also like that I can carry a few of them for easy snacking instead of some huge apple the size of my head.

I've also been getting into the art of picking out smaller, better tasting apples instead of just gravitating towards size and color. Some of those smaller and less pretty apples even in the same box are the best of the bushel.

At a party I was at last weekend someone put out a few boxes of small apples that likely came from the Finn River cidery and orchard across the way or another local orchard and farm. They were smaller and darn near rock hard, and looked and tasted somewhere been a smaller, tarter Fuji and a pink lady or honeycrisp or something. Lots of flavor, very crisp and sweet and most importantly, picked that day or so.

And when you bit into them? They'd cleave and shatter like glass, then melt in your mouth like candy. Not mealy or woody at all, but like the apples were candied they were so full of sugar and so fresh. Slices crumbled and crunched like a sweet, healthy potato chip! When I tried cutting them with my good razor sharp knife it was like trying to cut a gemstone - the knife would go right in and the apple would instantly cleave off on whatever internal grain it followed, even turning the knife into the grain a few times.

It was such a huge difference from the months to year old apple stocks we see in stores, even around here in WA state. That shattering thing these apples were doing was just mind blowing to me.
posted by loquacious at 10:03 AM on September 20, 2018 [4 favorites]


Yeah, I'm finding the secrecy and tone strange, too.

I've met a lot of dreamers like this and they'll claim up and down they need an apprentice or save some certain thing or some art project. I've offered to be that apprentice, or have pointed out they already have some, or that I know people that are interested in just that thing.

At this point in my life I probably have at least a thousand solid hours (both paid and unpaid) of being that kind of useless apprentice for this kind of dreamer. The self-made businessman liked to drive around and run a lot of errands and eat a lot of lunch. The mural artist wanted to smoke, drink and hold salons of debate with a captive audience.

When it came time to actually put things to tile or try some reproduction, it was always something else - the mural isn't done, this part needs rework, so, no, of course you can't just experiment with one of the tiles and do some process - it has to be done altogether at once in one grand work. Which, of course, isn't how grand works get done at all.

And often in the end they still either don't want to give up control, do the actual thing, work with an actual apprentice or do any of the actual work involved needed to accomplish the thing.

They're often self-sabotaging and giving up before they even start. (Heck, I've been this kind of a dreamer, too, many of us have.)

And in the end there's often an unreasonable expectation or demand for money or compensation - usually in some victimized and entitled way. They're owed this. They want someone to come in and buy them out, outright, but it has to be the exact right person, and it has to be some ludicrous pile of fuck-off money so they can do whatever their real dream is, which might just be sitting and chain smoking on the beach somewhere else, which, often there's nothing stopping them from just going and doing that, but this convoluted project or business is the one and only way to get there.

And I have yet to see it happen to these kinds of dreamers. Not without the work nor the flexibility or realism and reasonableness to make it actually happen.
posted by loquacious at 10:20 AM on September 20, 2018 [5 favorites]


If you're anywhere near Oxford (UK, that is), the Wolvercote Community Orchard has their Apple Day on October 7th.

And if you're anywhere near Canterbury (also UK), the Brogdale Collection just outside Faversham - the home of the National Fruit Collection! - has its annual Apple Festival the following weekend, 13th-14th October. "Celebrate over 2,200 different apple varieties..." - you don't get to eat them all, but there should be plenty of interesting old and new varieties to taste.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 11:03 AM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


More apple content from Cooking Issues, about their trip to the largest collection of apple trees in the world (in upstate NY!). Note well: the praise at the end for the Ashmead's Kernel is entirely justified; it's a truly delicious tart and apple-y apple, like if a Granny Smith was actually good.

The Ashmead's Kernel is also, in my experience, fairly small, though certainly not crab apple size.
posted by kenko at 12:16 PM on September 20, 2018


"They sell half-sized apples at the local farmers market as "lunchbox" apples aimed at kids who can't polish off a honey crisp the size of their head in one sitting."

Even grocery stores usually have them now -- I almost exclusively buy "lunchbox" apples and am very grumpy if I have to buy from the regular apple display. My last supermarket would just have "lunchbox apples" of no particular sort, but my current place has lunchbox apples in pink lady, fuji, granny smith, honeycrisp, and I think gala? No braeburn, which bums me out because I really like braeburns. But I rotate among the various options for the always-available fruit box that my kids raid 27 times a day.

Okay I found the kind my supermarket has: Lil Snappers. AND THEY DO SELL BRAEBURN, my supermarket just isn't carrying Braeburn! COMPLAINTS WILL BE MADE. (I'm totally impressed I remembered all the other varieties except Pinata, though!) Anyway, Lil Snappers -- mainstream midmarket grocery store item (Jewel, Food Lion, Hy-Vee), good apples, good size, A+++ would apple again. My kids eat around 9 pounds of apples a week so I buy a lot of apples.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:30 PM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


AAAAAAAA SECKEL PEARS! I bought some for the first time last week. They are tiny and wonderful. I finished off the last one last night by popping the whole thing into my mouth. It was soft and ripe and caramelly and entirely unlike eating a normal-sized soft pear. I just wish they were easier to find.
posted by afiler at 2:39 PM on September 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I live in Taiwan, lang of rich volcanic soil and the best fruit in the world (red dragonfruit! atemoya! egg fruit! sweet mango! tart mango! pineapples! rare gros michel bananas! worlds-best pineapple! jujubes! etc!), though the subtropical weather doesn't allow for the best North American-style fruit that I grew up on: cherries, stone fruit, apples. Most of those are imported because the local crops aren't good enough.

For a few weeks a year, though, if you have access to the right fruit shop you can get the most amazing Taiwanese apples. They are tiny, like this ... um ... orchardist's apples. They have a a different color pattern, shot through with high-contrast alternating wiggly stripes. Their skin is strangely-textured, dusty almost. The flavor is spectacular: boil down all the sweetness and tartness and terroir of the best big apple and contain it in a package the size of a racquetball. One year I made hard cider out of the Taiwan mini-apples - the second-best thing I ever brewed.

Two, three weeks pass and they're gone until next year. Replaced by imports from far-off Washington and Michigan and New Zealand of varying quality. Ahh well - at least the passionfruit are in season now!
posted by Enkidude at 10:28 PM on September 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


I was okay with the orchardist until he started wishing death on a poor apple tree that had done nothing but give him apple stock. Then I decided I didn't like him much.
posted by tavella at 11:10 PM on September 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


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