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In Washington state, the top apple producer in the country and the only state where growers are allowed to grow the new variety, Cosmic Crisp has exploded onto the scene.
“There’s a lot of excitement about it,” said Kate Prengaman, editor for Good Fruit Grower, a trade magazine owned by the Washington State Fruit Commission. She said that usually apple varieties ramp up over time; a few growers plant them, consumers like them, more growers join in.
But with the Cosmic Crisp, “Everybody jumped into the deep end and planted a lot of these trees,” Prengaman said. The level of investment in the new apples — around half a billion dollars for new orchards in Washington over the past few years, plus a $10 million national marketing campaign — is “unprecedented.” All over the country, there have been multi-thousand word profiles, counterintuitive hot takes, and glowing reviews on food sites.
It was this level of hype, and the raw passion that seemed to accompany it, that led me to a downtown Whole Foods on a recent Friday morning, where organic Cosmic Crisps were piled high, selling for $2.99 a pound (organic Gala apples were on sale for $1.49 a pound.). I carefully selected five varieties of apples and lugged them back to the newsroom for a very scientific taste test. (The apples, available nationwide, can be found at some Shaw’s and Star Markets in Massachusetts.)
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How would the apple of the future compare to the apples of the past?
I gathered seven colleagues — thankfully nothing else is happening in the city, nation, or world — and laid out the apple slices in an unmarked row. The proceedings were mostly silent to maintain fairness. The tasters took notes on each variety and then ranked their preferences.
My colleagues’ experience of “the apple of big dreams” (its official tagline) varied widely.
“Sharp, assertive, almost lemon-y,” one judge wrote.
“Tart, but also satisfying,” wrote another.
A third, less impressed colleague noted that the Cosmic Crisp was “bitter” and “needs peanut butter.”
But how would it stack up against its rivals?
WA-38, the name of the Cosmic Crisp apple crossbreed, came into existence in 1997, when Bruce Barritt, the former head of Washington State University’s apple-breeding program, made a lucky cross between Honeycrisp (quite popular, but finicky to grow) and Enterprise (hardy, with a long shelf life). The new cultivar was later branded the Cosmic Crisp , because of the bright speckling of lenticels, or pores, on the outside of the apple, which resembled a star-filled night sky.
Growers liked them because they are easy to raise and should do well in organic orchards, Prengaman said. Because the Washington apple industry helped to fund the research for the new apple, the state’s growers have an exclusive right to grow them for 10 years, according to Good Fruit Grower.
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Massachusetts fruit growers are taking it in stride. The state is a much smaller producer of fruit than Washington, said Ben Clark, the president of the Massachusetts Fruit Growers Association, and doesn’t have its own breeding program or proprietary brands. Still, Clark said, “We have apples that are just as good, in my opinion.”
The Cosmic Crisp is part of a mass experiment, because apple orchards take years to even begin producing fruit. For the experiment to work, people all over the country have to love Cosmic Crisps, and buy them, and go to bat for them — to become more devoted to them than Honeycrisps or Galas or Fujis or any of the specialty apples you may never have heard of, like Raves or Juicis. (One colleague expounded on the virtues of an apple cryptically named Envy.)
As for the Globe taste test, when all the votes were tallied, Cosmic Crisp tied with its parent apple, Honeycrisp, for the most number-one rankings. But Honeycrisp finished with the most rankings in the top two. (“Pops in your mouth like Pop Rocks” one fan wrote of that variety.)
These days, consumers are spoiled with choices in the apple aisle; they want a fruit that’s exquisitely glossy and pink, that tastes crisp and sweet and tangy all at once and looks unbruised and lasts forever. Could anything live up to those expectations?
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“It’s supposed to be the greatest apple ever?” one colleague asked about the Cosmic Crisp after the results were revealed. She surveyed the rows and rows of apple slices in front of her, cross-bred to perfection by scientists and growers and tasters over decades, shipped hundreds of miles to a grocery store in the center of Boston in the dead of winter.
“Meh,” she said.
Zoe Greenberg can be reached at zoe.greenberg@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @zoegberg.
"Taste" - Google News
January 06, 2020 at 05:27AM
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Does the new Cosmic Crisp apple live up to the hype? We taste-tested it to find out - The Boston Globe
"Taste" - Google News
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