A giant triploid apple, Spigold is a cross of Northern Spy and Golden delicious, bred at Cornell Geneva, selected in 1944 and introduced in 1962.
Spigold retains some of the minerality of Spy, with Golden Delicious aromatics. We have made a single varietal Spigold for years…with a very champagne-like flavor profile.
Several on the Eve’s team list Jonagold as their number one favorite eating apple. We also love Jonagold aromatics in distilled spirits. Jonagold was bred by the Cornell breeding program in Geneva, New York. It was selected in 1943 and introduced in 1968, and it has become broadly popular in Europe.
Idared
(red apple aromas)
Not technically a cider apple, but we like to use it in blends to layer in a red apple aroma. Good for storing, eating and cooking too.
Newtown Pippin
(American Heirloom)
Tart green apple of much fame. Stores well and good for eating too.
Liberty is primarily a fresh eating apple, but we use it occasionally in blends to add an aromatic punch. It’s one of those varieties that ferments into an aroma that is remarkably similar to the fresh apple. It is a scab resistant cross of Macoun by a malus floribunda offspring, bred at the Geneva Experiment Station in the 1950s. A diminutive tree that crops heavily and annually.
We like to add a certain amount of highly aromatic dessert pears to our otherwise tannic perry, and to pear based distilled spirits. Potomac is a good one because it is highly fireblight resistant. A droup pear with lovely, delicate aroma when fully ripe.
Tydeman’s Worcester Early. (aromatics)
This apple drops all at once in late August. Be there or be square. Basically a summer apple with relatively low sugar, we prize this apple for the intensely pretty aromatics it will contribute to cider.
Cox Orange Pippin. (early acid, aroma)
Intensely flavored and quite tart, Cox is a nice blending apple for early September acid and nice ‘heirloom’ aromatics.
Akane (early acid, ripe red apple aromas)
Like it’s later cousin Idared, Akane’s Jonathan parentage means red apple aromas plus good acidity. Akane is all around quite disease resistant and produces annual crops of blemish-free, high-brix apples.
Roxbury Russet (classic russet flavor)
Russet’s as a group tend toward beeswax, honey, ripe melon and stone fruit. Roxbury is no exception. Perhaps the oldest “American” variety.
Saint Edmund’s Russet (early heirloom aromatics)
Delicious tropical aromas, plus density and balanced acid. A lovely, weeping growth habit and regular annual bearing. Resistant to scab but will crack with excessive swings in ground moisture.
Goldrush (Sweet tart high sugar acid source)
Scab resistant modern apple with high gravity and lots of acidity. Diminutive tree with a tendency to overcrop. Will last in storage for just about forever and is a fantastic eating apple. Caution: the acid has a flavor that verges on “malic” think sweet tarts candy in cider. Could be a plus or minus depending on your style.
Bramley’s Seedling. (pure acid)
The acid is a fresh, bright acid that doesn’t come across as “malic;” an important blending component useful for bringing up acidity without changing the flavor. A massive apple size makes harvest easy but this tree can easily be pushed into biennial bearing.
Northern Spy. ( Minerality: salt and shale)
We love NS for its minerality; however, this is definitely one of those apples that is fairly insipid when grown and harvested like dessert fruit in the wrong location. Our Spy is specifically the original strain, not “Red Spy” which ferments very differently. It has a neutral sort of fresh/unripe apple aroma when fermented that verges into a salty/ shale austerity. Grown on our dry gravelly ground, it has a refreshing acid-tannin component that is very much wet stone. We often use this as the last blending component; a blend that has the right structure and aromatics will often take on a new level of depth with 10% or 15% Northern Spy.