Over two hundred years before Honeycrisp and its knockoffs (Crimson Crisp,
Cosmic Crisp, and – for all I know – former major league outfielder Coco Crisp)
roamed the earth, Baldwin was the It Girl of apples. For around 150 years the
variety was planted widely throughout the Northeast, valued for its quality,
versatility, shipability, and storage life. It was one of the earliest and best-known
commercial varieties, and though far less widespread today, Baldwin still retains a
lot of its former reputation among home orchardists, cidermakers, and apple
connoisseurs.
Baldwin’s history, as with many old apples, is a bit fuzzy, depending on
which sources you believe. But it seems reasonably clear that the original tree was
discovered around 1740 growing on the farm belonging to John Ball (and later
James Butters) in Wilmington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. (The apple was
originally dubbed Butters Apple.) James’ brother William then moved the tree to
his own farm, where one Samuel Thompson of Woburn, who was surveying the
Middlesex Canal around 1780, noticed the tree, both because of its crop of big red
apples and because a resident woodpecker was working away to find insects under
the bark. (And thus the apple’s other early name: Woodpecker or simply ‘Pecker’ –
I know, no jokes please!) Thompson brought the apples home with him to share
and eventually took scions (dormant cuttings) from the tree to propagate the apple.
Poor old Thompson, though, didn’t win the naming contest; that prize would go to
one of his neighbors, Colonel Loammi Baldwin, who was so taken with the variety
that he turbocharged interest in the apple, which soon became famous in nearby
Boston and later much farther afield.
The great qualities of the Baldwin notwithstanding, it did (and does) have a
couple of drawbacks. The first is the fact that this apple, like many heirloom
varieties, tends toward biennial bearing, setting a big crop one year and then a
small or even no crop the following year. Many fruits, not just apples, do this, so
the tree has time to recover after a heavy-bearing year. But it’s not ideal for large
commercial growers, for obvious reasons.
Baldwin’s second major flaw, though, toppled it from its market
preeminence. In the winter of 1933-34, temperatures rose in February, then
plummeted, down to -40 degrees F (which, actually, is also -40 degrees C). That
sudden temperature shock to the system killed upwards of one million Baldwin
trees. After that, growers looked to replant with another, hardier variety, and they
found it in the McIntosh, an apple from southern Ontario. McIntosh was also a
reliable annual cropper, so that’s how it supplanted Baldwin.
Wow, that’s a lot of history to digest, but suffice it to say that Baldwin is still
around today, mainly in New England, where it grows well, and mainly among
people who know and value it for specific uses. One of these is as a cider apple; in
fact, with the resurgent interest in hard cider since 2000, Baldwin has been used for
blending and to make its own excellent single-variety cider. I love it for that, but
also as a superlative baking apple, particularly for mid to late season apple pies.