I remember when Braeburn was first becoming established from New Zealand, when it was regarded as an almost perfect apple. It was firm, crunchy and sweet, with a great acid balance and a lovely flavour.
Then it spread around the apple-producing world without much control; the uniformity of quality was lost and several variants appeared, some with more red blush, others with quite a different flavour, not all good. My faith in the variety diminished as I never really knew what quality I was going to get, and I suspect many people felt the same.
Now, however, 20 years or so later, the status of Braeburn is looking up. Growers and retailers have worked hard to establish better uniformity, and many of the poorer types and growing areas have been abandoned.
It is worth noting, though, that variation still exists, as with these three examples from Belgium, France and UK (pictured). The middle Braeburn, from France, looks and tastes like a different variety, while the two on either side are much closer to the original.
As well as these three origins, in stores at the moment (December) are Braeburn from Slovenia (in Waitrose), Italy (in Lidl and as Organic in Tesco and Sainsbury) and Germany (in Morrisons). I bet they all taste slightly different!
For my money, I think the New Zealand Braeburn, available in our summer months, still sets the bar for quality, though much of the fruit grown in the UK is very good, perhaps with a little more of a tang. It is often tempting to reach for the more blushed varieties, but there is no guarantee that more red colouration means better taste, in fact it is often the opposite.
Given the same variant of Braeburn, there will always be slight differences in eating quality between different growing areas, both in sweetness, acid levels and flavour (for example, South African Braeburn are consistently sweeter), but there should be a distinct commonality of eating experience between the different sources, much like that achieved by the newer ‘club’ varieties such as Pink Lady, Jazz, Kanzi and Rubens, for which tight quality standards are applied to use the name.
Braeburn is not a protected or registered variety, so it is up to growers and retailers of Braeburn to ensure that only the best are grown and sold. As consumers, we can really only vote with our feet, but it would be a great pity if this lovely variety is allowed to disappear from our shelves.
I’ve asked this question many times. For many years my favourite apple was the Granny Smith. A very firm, quite tart, probably acid variety, and it was always consistent. Something changed and I started to be disappointed by some purchases. I eventually gave up on them and transferred my allegiance to ‘the new’ Braeburn apple.
As others say above this favour only lasted a few years before changes started to appear and the frequency of disappointment increased.
I now alternate between Pink Lady and Jazz but have already found variation creeping in.
A recent TV programme spoke of long term storage of fruit and veg in high CO2 and low temperature – for up to a year!! So much for fresh apples.
Hello Frank,
You have posed a complex question on apples generally, but one that does have an explanation. Hopefully, I will be able to give you some insight.
There is a relationship, regardless of variety, between apple eating quality and numerous factors from growing to harvest to storage, transportation and retailing.
As a generalisation, all varieties have a perfect location for growing; a perfect time for harvest; an optimum length of storage time and optimum specifications for sale, by which I mean measurements of sweetness and texture.
Granny Smith (a mid-to-late season variety originating in Australia) is generally grown in the areas with long growing seasons but moderate temperatures. Growing areas in France and Italy, and South Africa and Chile and New Zealand are ideal, from which we have traditionally imported our Granny Smiths. There are slight variations in eating quality between these areas, the most notable being sweeter fruit from South Africa and more acidic fruit from Chile and New Zealand, and, of course, even in these countries, there are areas that are unsuitable for production of the best quality. However, in their seasons, all produce the eating quality expected of the variety. We import Granny Smiths from all these countries, though less so from New Zealand and Chile. Recently, there have been some UK-grown Granny Smiths on sale, which I haven’t tasted, but would guess are quite acidic as the growing areas are a bit further north than normally expected for the variety. There have also been quite a few from Spain, which may be slightly sweeter than the norm. In general, without knowing the source of the fruit you have bought, I think that origin is less likely as an explanation for the loss of quality that you describe.
The other factors that affect eating quality of apples, such as harvest timing, transportation conditions, packhouse handling and retailing are probably much the same now as they always were in the past. In fact, I would hope that skills and awareness have improved over the years, so these are unlikely to be responsible for a decline in Granny Smith eating quality. A caveat to this assertion is that there are two more major retailers now involved in the sale of fruit, Aldi and Lidl. Their impact on other retailers has been a pressure on prices which can lead to lower quality specifications. I would be surprised, however, if this were a major factor as retailers know that reducing quality specifications is a poor strategy. It may be, however, that Lidl and Aldi have slightly lower quality specifications than the traditional supermarkets.
This leaves the issue of apple storage. Over the past 10-15 years the storage of apples has been revolutionised by the introduction of an ethylene-suppressing chemical called SmartFresh. This is applied to the fruit before transfer to cold stores and enables much longer storage of apples than the previous ultra-low oxygen (ULO) regimes. In ULO, Granny Smiths were normally stored for a maximum of 5-6 months, and were also limited by a disorder called scald. I’m not directly experienced with SmartFresh, but I believe that storage of Granny Smith can be prolonged by a couple of months and the problem with scald is much reduced. One impact of reliance on SmartFresh may be a tendency for growers to slightly relax the quality standards of fruit going into storage, and another may be the tendency to use fruit that was previously thought to be from marginal growing conditions.
It is this change in storage technique that I think may be responsible for your experience with Granny Smith.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Nick Ball
There’s no comparison to a New Zealand Braeburn.
English are over ripe, not crisp, and small.
Granny Smith is my go to apple, unless we import N.Z Braeburn again.
Well, New Zealand is the origin of the Braeburn variety and remains the comparator for all others. It will be on UK retail shelves again during the summer. The UK version of Braeburn is usually very good, so it is a pity that you have come across poor examples. There can always be some disappointing fruit on sale for any variety, but it is worth trying again to satisfy yourself.