Axel, we clearly think alike. Several years ago I decided to do the same thing but with the old French apples; I planted about 50 of them. I am growing a few of yours because of overlap.

Glockenapfel - Pomme Cloche in France supposedly. This late apple has more tartness than usual (even when well-aged) - something like a Roxbury Russet. It is not very aromatic, also like Roxbury.

Sauergrauech, (syn. Grauech, Pomme Raisin) - I am growing Pomme Raisin. It is fruiting for the first time this year and is not ripe yet.

Reinette Clochard (French variety) - I got a few of these last year and it was also more on the tart side but with more aromatics than the Cloche above. In my notes I wrote, "similar to but not quite as good as Canada Reinette".

Wagener - this is an American apple (my notes say NY circa 1790). I am growing it but no fruit yet.

I may well be growing a couple more on your list but don't know the synonyms.

So far I have found the old English apples to on average be better than the French ones, which surprises me considering how one thinks of French as foodies not English. Ribston, Cox, Egremont Russet, Claygate Pearmain all earn superlatives. So far I feel like I have one "discovery", Reinette de Cuzy -- it has an excellent and unusual savory component to the flavor which I really like. I look forward to hearing how your experiment works out!

Scott

Scott, I have a small start on French apples. As I grew up in the French speaking part of Switzerland, I have an interest in basically the French, Swiss, German and Austrian apples. I grafted about 30 French cider varieties last Winter, they're growing very fast. This Summer I am just getting started with the German heirlooms.

Perhaps we can trade scion wood next year. My taste buds are towards more of a tart, aromatic and spicy apple. I am not a big fan of most of the commonly available apples except for pink lady. I like odd rose and anise flavors, and I can't wait to taste some of my French bitter sweets. They should be an interesting apple to eat and add to juice, as I am not a big fan of sickely sweet apple juice, the type you can buy at the Farmer's market that's made with Fujis around here.

Berner Rosen is the ultimate apple from my childhood, it's scrumptiously delicious, sweet and sour, perfumy and aromatic. I don't know how it will taste grown in the California sun and with an adult palate, we'll see. A friend of mine as a tree that's loaded, so I plan on sampling in a few weeks.

Hm...you have allot, where did you get scion wood from?
>> I am grafting the following varieties this SummerYou must be doing budding?...
I'm mostly into bark grafting in spring.

I'm also from Switzerland, the apple region, Kanton Thurgau, your 3rd. last apple is spelled [Thurgauer]
Some of these we grew on the farm, like Berner Rosen, remember this one was fairly early and got soft early too, not a keeper, we made mostly juice from it, only had one tree,..it tasted excellent.
Glockenapfel was our best keeper, it kept superb aroma until summer the following year in the root cellar.
Sauergrauech is really sauer and was a good apple for the apple factory.

In my cold climate Canada North, it's not the place to grow most of these, sometimes I try some, think I have some German still hanging on, Jakob Fischer and a Brettacher Saemling?

Good luck!
Konrad

Interesting thread! I'm learning more and more about antique English and US apples, with a few French ones thrown in, but now German! Good to hear about favorites, especially tart-ish fresh eating and storage, and should I EVER get to them, cider apples. After learning about the "sharps" and "bittersweets", my palate wants to try something other than the syrupy-sweet present-day US ciders for the masses. Our little mountain town is getting more and more shops that cater to folks with discriminating tastes (a BIG hit is our new German bakery!) and I have dreams of selling specialty apples and maybe cider in the future. I'm ordering "Suntan", "Golden Nugget", "Egremont Russet", and "Kidd's Orange Red" trees and want to get scions of "Pomme Gris", "Orleans Reinette", "Hudson's Golden Gem", "Pitmaston Pineapple", and perhaps "Grimes Golden". Others include Winesap, "Newtown Pippin", "Golden Russet", and "Melrose". I like the idea of storage apples with unusual tastes, but fresh eating ones are inticing as well.

Herbert
Mineral Bluff, GA
Zone 6b/7a

Konrad, the Sauergrauech is out of the NY gene bank, they describe it as sub-acid, so we'll see if the sourness is a function of climate. We have a very long growing season here, so a lot of apples that are sour up north develop into incredibly rich and delicious apples here when left on the tree until February.

I grew up on an apple orchard in Switzerland as well, but the only one I remember was Berner Rosen. Even though it was the first apple to ripen, it was still a late September apple for us, which is considered mid-season here in California.

Herbert, I agree with your assessment on the syrupy sweet apples, especially the syrupy sweet cider. It needs a bitter sweets and sharps to balance the flavor.

Axel, I am also growing several of the French bittersweets. I'm not quite up to having enough to press but I still enjoy having a few bites to experience the unusual flavors (and then often spitting it out!). My Frequin Rouge may have enough this year to press a small batch. I think it is a wonderful cider apple but it comes earlier than the other ones I have.

I also like the unusual flavors in apples, and it is amazing how broad the taste spectrum is compared to what is commonly available. Recently I have discovered Akane (on the roses side) and Berlepsch (a savory flavor which is wonderful but I have not put my finger on how to describe it). Drop me a line in the winter if you are interested in a trade.

Scott

>>We have a very long growing season here, so a lot of apples that are sour up north develop into incredibly rich and delicious apples here when left on the tree until February.Who told you this??
.
As I said in my first post, Sauergrauech I experienced in Switzerland, not short of growing
season, most apples when ripe fall down and this one sure did!
I don't think you'll be waiting till February.LOL

I'm not so sure about your growing climate, I have a hunch that it's too hot?
Apples grow in many places around the world, but they grow best in places that are not too hot or too cold, actually, cooler is better. Canada, British Columbia has one of the best growing climate for Apples, Peaches and Cherries, I always love BC Cherries, Peaches etc. better then Washington fruits.
In the United States, more than half of the apples grown for fresh eating come from the state of Washington

>>Konrad, the Sauergrauech is out of the NY gene bankThanks...
How about the other 26 varieties?

Konrad

Konrad, Axel lives on the CA coast somewhere which does not get hot at all compared to where I live. In fact his summer highs may be lower than yours. I live in a hot summer area and would agree it is not perfect apple territory. But there are still plenty (most?) varieties which make extremely good apples here. Cherries are much more picky, they *really* like it cool. They still taste great, if they don't split or rot or tree dies first.

My personal feeling why Washington has done so well for apples is not because of the quality of the fruit per se, it is more for the fact that the Washington orchardists are much more advanced in their methods, including much better marketing (e.g. making all of us believe their apples are better). They got to build orchards from scratch in the mid-20th century and could use more modern growing techniques from the start to out-compete the traditional orchards in the rest of the US. The primary climate advantage they have I would say is less bug and disease pressure. If you are bringing in 10% more apples on average due to less disease pressure (and spending 10% less to produce the crop since less spraying is needed), that gives you a real edge.

Scott

I see I have to come back here every so often to police you guys. Seriously Scott, there is some truth to what you say but maybe not quite in the way you think.

The mountain valleys of Washington State have bright, sunshiny days with heat. At the same time these mountain valleys are essentially deserts and so have cold nights. The fruit receives water only as needed through irrigation which comes as runoff from the snowpacks in the mountains. Kinda like Coors, :) . The soil is volcanic ash. Same climate in British Colombia.
So it is possible to more easily and consistently grow and deliver quality fruit here.

"orchards from scratch in the mid-20th century and could use more modern growing techniques" Believe me, the orchards in the mid last century were not very modern.
"less bug and disease pressure" this is true making organic production much more successful than in New York State. But, New York growers can still profitably grow for processing market, where in Washington State you must market fresh or die. So in some respects you could say New York growers have an economic advantage.
You can grow fine fresh market apples in New York, Michigan, and, I am told, even in Oregon. One of the best apples I ever ate came from a coastal area of Cali.
Most people in the USA have never eaten a good Washington State apple as the big grower-packers have taken over and they have little incentive to deliver a really great apple. You can't expect those apples to taste quite as good in March as it did in October. But, the alternative is to go without. They won't grow a cosmetically challenged apple like Goldrush as most Americans wouldn't buy it. Can't blame the growers for that.
Support your local Farmer's Markets.

Konrad, my reference was to Granny Smith, which requires a very long growing season and in Northern latitudes, one might conclude that ripe Granny Smiths are green sour apples because that's all you get before the onset of freezes. In our climate, they ripen to a warm yellow color and become an extraordinary table apple with a very rich spectrum of flavors. The only catch is that this happens by the end of January. So sometimes, it may be that apples that are considered sour further north have a long enough growing season here to convert a lot of tannins to sugars while still on the tree.

I live in California apple country, famous for its gravensteins and hauer pippins. The area used to be covered with apple orchards before imports from South America killed the market. We still have lots of them around, but a lot less than before. Right now there's an apple moth quarantine which is killing the rest of the apple orchards.

Summer highs here average 75F and Summer lows range 47F to 54F, quite a bit colder than anywhere else in the US. Winters pack quite a bit of chill, with about 900-1200 hours accumulation (0C-7C) here in the Santa Cruz mountains at some elevation. Even though we see many frosts, there are many parts of the mountains that rarely if ever see a freeze. On the other hand, deep mountain valleys can have June frosts and this Spring, a few growers in the cold valleys had their cherry blossoms frozen off from an unusually late freeze.

So nope, we're definitely not too hot for apples, quite to the contrary, we have about one of the best apple growing climates in the country. We get to ripen Fall quality Summer apples thanks to the rather chilly nights, and delicious late season Winter apples that ripen as late as February like Lady Williams from Australia. The low chill, tropical "Anna" apple will start blooming in January when a number of other apples still hang on the trees to ripen. The first Anna apples ripen in late May to early June.

I can't extrapolate any of this to how the Swiss and German varieties will perform here. It's never been done before. Most people grow English apples, although our Winter scion exchanges feature at least 500 varieties, sometimes more thanks to the fact that there are a lot of apple collectors in Norcal. We'll see how Sauergrauch fares in such a long, cool growing season.

My goal is to select the best German, French and Swiss apples once I figure out how they perform, and then cross them with some of the very late local varieties to get real late season apples that can store well. These would not be growable up north because the season would be too short. The reason for this is that the best quality apples are the ones that ripen during late Fall conditions, and we get those conditions starting maybe mid December through February.

And to set the record straight, commercial apples from Washington and anywhere else pretty much suck! You can't judge an apple's quality and a growing region based on the cardboard apples being sold to the general public. Local Farmer's markets and backyards are a far better source. Most apple regions will also have public apple tasting events.

Geraldo, I am just repeating an argument I read somewhere which made a lot of sense. I wish I remembered where I read it. Maybe it got butchered a bit in the retelling.

Scott

No Scott, I would say you had it pretty close. It is just that in the sixties we planted trees about 18 feet apart in every direction. There were a few planting closer. In the seventies we went about 12 x 18 for 200. In the late eighties many were going for much closer plantings as the varieties shifted from the spur type reds to Gala, Fuji and some Jonagold. These non spurs could be put on 9 or 26 and 6 x 12 like that. So I guess what we would start to call a modern type of planting really started in quantity in the eighties. the Dutch were planting some blocks as close as one foot by six or even five! Real little spindle trees. those who tried that here had much sunburn, I think.

Axel, I have a few of the varieties you mention - Wagener and Oldenburg. I'm sure I have more of the list but I would have to do a little research on syns. etc. I lived in Germany as a child and so I have an interest in German apples as well as Kansas (our current location) varieties. Before moving here I lived near the Amana colonies in Iowa - they had several old German apples growing in an orchard by "Zuber's Restaurant". I've called around to find out if anyone knew what types are still growing but with no luck yet. Oldenburg is considered a fantastic apple in our area but ours has yet to produce. I'll have over 250 apple varieties by the end of spring and would love to trade scion wood with you sometime in the future as well as share info. Please bookmark my website and I'll have the variety list updated soon.

Here is a link that might be useful: Wagon Wheel Orchard

kansasApple, send me an E-mail via the Gardenweb interface, I also sent you one on your website.

I will be glad to trade.

Hello. Would you happen to know what these apples are. I’ve been trying to figure out if the have different names depending on where they grow or are they solely German apples. Thank you for any help.

Valere

I know I am a few years late finding this discussion but I am a Swiss person living in Georgia and am looking to add some Swiss (surrounding countries too) Apple varieties to my garden

any information is greatly appreciated!