The Curse of the Honeycrisp Apple
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
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.
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.
Altering plants for better taste does have a place.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I rarely see them for that cheap a cost in the bay area. I think I've seen them as low as maybe 2.20/lb but that's it.
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.
Exactly. That is why Pink Lady > Honeycrisp
Although i am also fond of Discovery - it's a good apple, with striking red-streaked flesh. And my dad's got a tree of it, which helps.
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.
I only started seeing them in the last 2 years. My current reliably available favorite is Fuji apples.
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.
I'm wondering if I have one of those "cilantro tastes like soap" mutations that affects my Pink Lady enjoyment...
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.
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.
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.
logfromblammo
HN, 11/18
That paragraph would make a nice children’s book with the right illustrator.
The narrator would get older each page until he was eating the rais-apples with no teeth.
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.
Really? I can think of a few just off the top of my head, ambrosia, gala, pink lady, spartan, fuji. I'm not really even that into apples.
I guess I'm even less into apples.
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.
You can actually tell the quality of a RD by pressing on them with your thumb. The mealy ones will give. The crispy ones won't.
I suspect even a honeycrisp will get mushy if you let it sit on the shelf long enough.
I never had one until I moved to New York but now it's my favourite variety.
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.
A few good years then on to new hotness. Think of all those poor red delicious trees.
I'm one of those who don't understand the appeal of honeycrisp, I guess I prefer soft-fleshed apples.
I can't find them in Los Angeles.
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 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.
> "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...
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.
And yes, loss of production is a huge hit to an orchard.
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.
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.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theresabeckhusen/2018/10/06/tha...