The article mentions it only in passing, but in 2019 we'll finally see Cosmic Crisps [0] on the market. These are likely to surpass the Honeycrisp in texture, sweetness, and tart. And unlike the otherwise excellent Honeycrisp, Cosmic Crisps are not susceptible to sun burn nor bitter pit (brown pits on the apple). I'm excited to try them!
I got a couple Cosmic Crisp at a farmer's market this year in NYC. Can confirm they're better than Honeycrisp in every way, albeit they're so sweet and tart that you might not feel like eating that many per year.
I'd compare it to something like a Rebecca's Gold pawpaw, where it's like "this is the best thing I've ever eaten" but you wouldn't really want more than one or two per week during their short season.
Cosmic Crisps will supposedly not only taste amazing, but be cheaper than Honeycrisps as they're easier to manage and orchard owners are replacing red delicious as it is basically disgusting.
So this article is about east coast orchards complaining that a plant that was bred to grow in Minnesota doesn't grow as well on the east coast? Well duh. As Karina Gallardo, an agricultural economist at Washington State University was quoted in the article saying “There’s a higher investment and production cost in places that are not Minnesota,” And yet it seems these orchard still make money off Honeycrisp so I'm not sure why this article was written in the first place.
> I'm not sure why this article was written in the first place
It's an inside look, not really news. If you abstract it to "some competitors face challenges meeting changing consumer demands", it's boring. But some people might find the details of the apple market interesting.
I have childhood memories of going into the woods around the park to pick blackberries. The flavors to be found in good blackberries are pretty sublime. The other day, I bought a container of blackberries. Somehow, they had been reduced to bloated, flavorless bags of purple sugar water. (I suspect this is why they were a sale item.)
Altering plants for better taste does have a place.
November is months past blackberry season, so you are probably buying something picked far away, before it was properly ripened, then chilled and placed in a shipping container for who knows how long.
Buying produce regularly, I've been learning exactly this. It's a mindset shift- we're trained that anything can be had any time of year. But the quality difference between in season and out of season is staggering. Except, perhaps, for apples and bananas.
Exactly, those ones in the woods are superior. I think the loss from premature picking and abuse during transit just reeks havoc on berries in general. I wound up getting a cutting of a wild blackberry and planted it in the yard. It's a wild thing that must be tamed and pruned regularly but its worth it.
Currants are [mostly] unknown in the USA. Biggest reason is the ban on black currants cultivation from a 100 years ago. I don't care much for fresh red or white currants (they are good in jams though), but black currant is something I really miss here.
The reason for that ban is that currant plants can spread white pine blister rust[0], which American pine trees have little resistance to. However, plant breeders are working on resistant strains of blackcurrant and pine tree, and the ban is decided by individual states, so it's not impossible to get blackcurrants in the US.
I just want to say that I spent my childhood eating terrible red delicious apples and honey crisp apples are a revelation and I don’t care if they cost $18/pound they’re still worth it.
The apples I have eaten in my childhood behind the Iron Curtain were so bad I have not eaten any for decades until my doctor almost forced it and then I tasted honeycrisp and I was like "OMFG this is good!"
Here in Los Angeles your typical store has 6-10 varieties of apple, almost all of them painfully similar.
Braeburn, Jazz, Fuji, Honeycrisp, Gala, Ambrosia, Jonagold, Envy... these are all the same basic apple: overly sweet, hard/dense, not a lot of taste outside sugar. Envy apples are the yellow version of the same thing. Pink Ladies are marginally better.
If anyone knows an LA area market where I can escape the tyranny of obnoxiously "crisp" sugar bombs in favor of Cortlands, McIntosh, Jonathan, or anything out of the ordinary... do tell.
If the Granny Smith wasn't available I don't know what I'd do.
While a bit of a drive from LA, if you haven't made a trip out to Oak Glen I'd suggest a look at the various apple orchards out there: https://www.oakglen.net/ .
This place for example lists 25 or so varieties http://losriosrancho.com/produce/ and all the orchards I've visited over the years provide samples of most, if not all, of their stock.
Try them fresh from a pick-it-yourself orchard; the difference is unbelievable. The problem is that grocery store "apples" are often picked underripe, and they sit in a cold room for months before making it to the shelves.
So is it just me or are jazz apples always very powder-y to the point of tasting spoiled? I don't get why any store would sell that so I'm assuming I'm doing something wrong...
I used to work at a grocery store, and actually don't feel the way OP does. Honeycrisp are fairly different, in my opinion. A fair bit tarter, and they have an almost fluffy light crisp texture. They even have a different cellular structure than your average apple, IIRC.
Though I agree that more apple varieties would be good, OP is underplaying the differences between the widely available apples. Growing conditions have a great effect in flavor and texture as well.
1. Pink Lady > Honeycrisp (though Honeycrisp is very good).
2. "The Honeycrisp variety is now so popular, consumers will spend three times the cost of other apples to experience it." Wow, I'm thankful I live in Oregon. Our local grocery store has about 10 varieties of apples on sale and Honeycrisp are usually no more expensive than other varieties.
Pink lady better than Honeycrisp? Pink lady's are okay but they are less sweet, not as crunchy and much more dense then a Honeycrisp. Also Honeycrisp are not that expensive if you buy them on sale, just got some for $1.85 a pound in Minneapolis.
I remember buying Honeycrisps for $1.09/# in SE Wisconsin, back before they got nationally popular. Of course, now that they are popular, they sell for more than $3/# where I currently live, and you can often tell they were grown somewhere other than northern lake country, just because they taste so different. East coast Honeycrisps really are no better than Pink Lady, and if you line up three genetically identical Honeycrisps from Washington, Minnesota, and New York, there is absolutely no question that you will be able to pick out the Minnesota one by taste.
It's like buying low-sulfur onions grown somewhere other than Vidalia, GA. If you know the food well enough, you can sometimes taste the placeness in it.
$2.20 is not a bad price for Honeycrisp, If I saw that price and the apples looked good I would buy a bunch. They seem to come in two prices in Minneapolis just under $4 dollars a pound or just under $2 a pound, depending on the season and if they are on sale or not.
Have you tried Envy apples? I like them a bit more than Pink Lady or Honeycrisp, though they're all pretty tasty.
They can be a bit hard to find. Here in Toronto I've only seen Envys from New Zealand. They grow a decent number of them in Washington, though, and since you're right next door in Oregon maybe your grocery store will have some of those.
Yep. Lucky to be in the pacific northwest apple country (British Columbia for me), where a super market will have tons of apple varieties such as Jazz, Pink Lady, and locally developed Ambrosia (so sweet and honeylike it's almost like a dessert apple).
Pink Lady is better than Honeycrisp, as Honeycrisp is far too sweet and generally are too large to eat as a small snack. Pink Lady's can sometimes have a bad aftertaste though. Personally I've been buying the Fuji variety for the last couple years, while mixing in some experimentation with other varieties. Cheaper than both Pink Lady and Honeycrisp, but not overly sweet and without the occasional bad aftertaste.
Absolutely agreed. One thing I've noticed though is that they are harder to find for some reason. The stores near me have gallons of red delicious, gala, fuji, and granny smith. Honeycrisp is a nice find, and pink ladies I have to remember where I bought. Do people really like those common garbage apples, or just buy them because they are cheaper?
I’ve tried Honeycrisps a few times and I just don’t understand why they’re so loved. They have a super crisp skin with a mealy interior, and I swear the flavor has a hint of tomato. It’s so off-putting.
Honeycrisps grown in the wrong climate are remarkably meh.
Ones grown in the north to northwest are far better.
Just today I found a sale on organic Honeycrisps from Washington State and they're outrageously good. The flesh is very sweet and only slightly tart (not like a Pink Lady) and when you bite into it, what feels like half the apple cleaves off into your mouth. The interior is by no means mealy if you get a good one.
The problem is that growers everywhere try growing them due to the high prices, and it just isn't good at growing everywhere.
> at a certain point the consumer doesn’t want to buy an apple the size of a grapefruit
Um... yes I do. Is the Honeycrisp itself not sufficient proof that apple growers have had absolutely no clue about what consumers really wanted, for decades? In the same vein, where have all the honkin' big seeded watermelons gone? You remember those, back when they had big black seeds, and actual flavor? Don't blame the consumer for not wanting to buy things they can't find in the store any more. The truth is that the apple infrastructure cannot pick and ship fruit that size, so they refuse to try, and then they blame the consumer for their choices.
It bears repeating that the first Honeycrisp tree was thrown away, without anyone ever tasting the fruit. Even now, remedying that error has basically led to just one guy tasting all the apples, to the point where he has to use special toothpaste to save his teeth from the malic acid, and making the clone or cut decision based on that one bite.
> The demand for this one apple exceeds supply—it’s all consumers, and therefore supermarkets, want.
This is patently false. I frequently pass up Honeycrisp for other varieties (Fuji, Gala, Pink Lady), because the latter are $1.29/# and the former is something insane, like $3.59/# . I like Honeycrisp, but not three times more than other firm, tart apples. And I don't want Honeycrisp to be my only option for table fruit.
How often do we have to remind growers that monoculture is stupid? Stop cloning Honeycrisp everywhere just because it's a sure sale, and try out some new varieties. If it fails as a table variety, you can always make hard cider, or applejack, and sell it to Millennial hipsters.
Do you have any idea what edible mutualists you could grow with them? I'd bet there is a fungus meant for the rootbed. Having trouble intuiting much beyond that though.
I agree with what you're trying to communicate, I think, but my anecdote from yesterday disagrees with size. I looked at the massive honey crisp on my counter (around a softball's size), but didn't want to have to cut it in half.
I want apples that I can fit three in my mouth at a time, that squish like grapes. I want apples bigger than my head, that I can pop into the oven whole, then cut off the top and spoon out the flesh like custard. I want apples that crunch when I bite them. I want apples that splat when I throw them. I want apples that taste like cherries. I want apples that taste like pears. I want apples that taste like different kinds of apple when you bite opposite sides of the fruit. I want apples that stay the same color when you cut them up. I want apples that are already fermenting by the time you get them home. I want apples that shrivel up all winter into little wrinkly apple-raisins, and then still taste fine in spring.
What I don't want is one apple that's one size fits all. Because the last variety they tried for that was Red Delicious, and it is the worst named variety of apple I have ever eaten. The only way to get worse is to try naturally pollinated grown-from-seed apples, and even then you have to be very unlucky with your pick.
Apple farmers tend to graft the variety clones onto dwarfing rootstock, to control for height and branching, so it's likely that any mutual crop would work just as well for any kind of apple. I seem to recall that someone was trying to get truffle to grow in apple orchards, but I don't remember seeing anything about it actually being successful.
Variety and regional specialty are good! This article seems to be complaining that things grow well in one place and not another place. Breed your own apples then!
There aren't any apples besides honeycrisp that I know I like for eating out of hand. The market wants better produce all around and most things you find these days were bred for qualities that are good for the supply chain instead of the taste and health of the consumer.
If the apples everybody likes don't grow well in your climate, fund research into finding new varieties that do.
There's no "curse". The best things will not suit everybody's tastes or needs. In fact it's a pretty good indicator that you're doing something right if some people really don't like it.
I suspect it's "improvements" in storage that are to blame. All Granny Smiths are clones from the same tree, and they were grown successfully in many different places, so I don't think climate is the problem. Probably it's some new storage technique that lets them keep longer without rotting, at the expense of taste/texture. I see problems with bananas too that I think have the same cause, where they turn directly from green to brown, and I don't remember that happening ten years ago.
Target has 3lb bags of honeycrips at consistently low prices $2ish/lb. It is because they're smaller apples than what you get in the "pile-o-apples". But this works great for us because we have small kids and they can't eat a huge honeycrisp anyway.
If you really like a big honeycrisp but are more price conscious, I think the Braeburn is a damn close comparison for a much more reasonable price. And they're available at all the stores around me in Iowa. Just stick with the ones that still have a fair bit of yellow/green spackle and not too much or too deep of the red color. Too much red ends up being slightly less crisp with much less tartness. That is kind of true with honeycrisp but it is really true with Braeburn.
http://skillcult.com/ has an amazing set of blog posts and videos about a whole range of obscure and interesting apple varieties. He’s talked about apples that taste like fruit punch, bananas, anise, spice, etc. The range of possible flavors that apples can express is pretty amazing.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Fujis. And nothing beats a good Red Delicious if it's fresh. I know that Red Delicious is reputed to be the White Zinfandel of the apple world, but I like 'em, and I don't care what the apple snobs have to say about it. (Or the wine snobs either, for that matter.)
Here in Los Angeles (Specifically Sunland Produce in Sunland) Honeycrisps are available nearly year around for 99 cents a pound. Not on sale. It's insane, I've lived all over the place and the price actually shocks me every time i go in.
I just have to second this. Macouns are sublime. They peak in late fall in the northeast. Their fragrance in the cold New England fall air is the definition of November to me.
Agreed! Really wish we could get Macouns in Washington. Honeycrisp are good, but a bit sweet for my taste. I also like how comparatively small New England apples are.
I just came across Smitten apples and they are also crunchy, sweet and tart like the honeycrisp.
https://www.smittenapple.com
In California even these new apples are relatively cheap, i never pay over 1$/lb
Those who complain about red delicious simply do not know how to pick them. I often pass over them if they are not hard with tight skin. Put them in the fridge and they can be great. In fact I put all my apples into the fridge, it extends their shelf life about 2-3x.
Honeycrisp have been on sale a lot lately (99 cents a pound a week ago)
Honeycrisp is good, but it just seems sort of hollow and doesn't really leave you feeling any fuller at the end. It also doesn't seem to have much depth of flavor. It's just sweet.
The Honeycrisp is fine, but I don't love the trend of Apple varieties that taste like jolly ranchers (super sweet and crisp - see also Pink Lady or Jazz). Old fashioned apple varieties like Macintosh and even Red Delicious can be great in season from local farms - I had a Red Delicious today I would take over any Honeycrisp.
I have friends who only eat Honeycrisp, I feel old when I complain that it's not a real apple and they should try something else.
I don't understand how anyone could feel this way. Pink Lady and Honeycrisp are so much better than Red Delicious they may as well not even be the same fruit. I'll never eat a Red Delicious again.
It's almost certainly about location. Maybe there's some climate where good-tasting Red Delicious grows.
I find that Fuji apples in the US are fairly bland, but when I was in Japan I had one from Aomori Prefecture. It was right up there with the best Honeycrisp I've ever had. Crisp in the same way, and just as flavorful in a different way.
Fresh Red Delicious from a local farm can be good. The ones in cafeterias or cheap supermarkets are beyond terrible. My point is that good versions of traditional varieties can be very good, even though they are less sweet.
This is one of the silliest articles I've ever read.
> "Though it succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, along the way it became a nightmare for some producers, forcing small Northeastern growers to compete with their massive, climatically advantaged counterparts on the West Coast."
> Prices for Honeycrisps Can Be 2-3x Other Apples
> "So why do farmers put up with the hassle? They simply don’t have a choice. The demand for this one apple exceeds supply—it’s all consumers, and therefore supermarkets, want. So growers are planting with almost reckless abandon, pulling out old varieties, like the tired Red Delicious, and putting in Honeycrisp trees—even in places where they don’t grow well."
> "Meanwhile, everyone is nervously waiting for the day when the supply-demand equilibrium brings sticker prices down far enough that growing the Honeycrisp no longer makes economic sense. But it’s not likely to happen soon, said Eric Rama, head of agricultural research at MetLife Inc. Even though production is increasing at a rapid pace, demand for premium apples isn’t waning."
Farmers need to grow the things that people want to buy? And it seems like this will be the situation for the foreseeable future, so it's low-risk? And they sell for more?
Really struggling to see how this is a curse... instead of sensational journalism at its very worst...
It’s a curse if you were a small orchard happily growing another apple variety. No one wants your apples anymore so you have to rip out all your trees an plant new one. (Side note: Really you’re grafting new branches.) That’s a lot of capital investment for a family business that might have been eeking along already.
And, as the article says, who knows when you’ll need to switch to the next variety.
Where does the expense come in for grafting? Isn't the only cost basically the parafilm? I'm not a grafter, but my understanding is that you just take some branches from the varietal you want to clone, cut off the tops off your existing root stock, and then connect the root stock with the twig using some grafting tape.
Unless by capital investment you just mean the fact that you're not going to get more apples for another three years or whatever.
Apple trees take years to begin producing fruit. A new orchard is very expensive in terms of labor and the opportunity cost of tying up acreage with non-producing plants.
I’m not a grafter myself so I don’t know the specifics. But I do know it’s not cheap. Labor intensive and I don’t think the branches are cheap, despite them growing on trees.
And yes, loss of production is a huge hit to an orchard.
Think of it in terms of monoculture with all the attendant problems.
I'm from Minnesota but have lived recently in a neighboring state. There is a very popular orchard near where we live. Part of its appeal has been the variety of apple varieties they had. Too many heirlooms to list, along with modern varieties such as honeycrisp. A few years ago I noticed the new owners (the old one retired because of age) were ripping out many of the heirloom varieties and replacing them with honeycrisp. This had been going on but accelerated. When I talked to them, they basically explained that the other varieties were popular, but honeycrisp brought in much more money and was in very high demand.
I think honeycrisp is a great apple, but there are many many great apple varieties, and I get frustrated by the focus on honeycrisp in particular. There's nothing wrong with supplying what's in demand, but I do have a problem with demand being sooo hyperfocused. People get so obsessed with one variety, and then a little later move on to the next big thing.
People become obsessed with honeycrisp, growers rip out other varieties, breed honeycrisp-tasting new varieties, then people get sick of it because it's all honeycrisp, honeycrisp, honeycrisp. They want something different, and then it all happens over again.
People want what they want, I suppose, but to me it seems pretty fickle and destructive.
Unfortunately, while I agree with you on the monoculture angle, I'm not sure this article covered it in any meaningful way.
It's really sad to grow food and know what it looks like, and then go into a grocery where everything looks like an identical twin. A forked carrot? Must have been mutated by nuclear waste! A strawberry that isn't the size of a Snickers bar? Can't possibly be good!
It's consumer attitudes and opinions that need to change to make this better. It's interesting in America especially where one of the foundational attributes of the culture is "individuality" that the consumers expect the opposite of their produce.
[0]: https://www.cosmiccrisp.com/the-facts/