Winesap

Several years ago I was staying with friends who run an orchard and cider business

in Virginia. One Sunday morning in April we were making apple pancakes, and I

was asked to go down and grab some apples from the walk-in cooler at the barn. At

that time of year there were only a couple of varieties left, but they included some

Virginia Winesaps, which were still quite firm and in excellent condition. I grabbed

a few of those, and they were terrific cooked up for brunch.

I mention this to explain why this early American apple variety remained

popular for so many years, surpassing even some major commercial varieties like

Baldwin. Like other old-time favorites (Roxbury Russet, Northern Spy, etc.),

Winesap easily keeps in good condition until spring in regular cold storage. In the

days before controlled atmosphere (CA) storage, that remarkable longevity was an

important selling point, as was Winesap’s durability, which meant that it could be

shipped without damage to distant markets. And yet this very virtue also explains

why the popularity of Winesap has slipped in these days of modern refrigeration

and long-term CA storage, and from out-of-season imports from Chile and New

Zealand. Rowan Jacobsen in his excellent book, Apples of Uncommon Character,

cites statistics showing that Winesap accounted for around 50 percent of the U.S.

commercial apple crop in 1950; yet by 1980 it represented just 2 percent of the

crop, and by this century it had fallen completely off the charts.

Winesap’s exact origins are a bit hazy. First mentioned in 1803-04 by Dr.

James Mease of Philadelphia in the Domestic Encyclopedia, it was listed briefly as

a cider apple—something that the name itself should give away. In 1817 William

Coxe called it “one of our best cider fruits” and said that “the cider produced from

it is vinous, clear, and strong; equal to any fruit liquor of our country for bottling.”

High praise indeed, and as true 200-plus years later as it was then. Mease and

others reported that the variety was first cultivated by Samuel Coles of

Moorestown, N.J. Whether true or not, the apple is widely thought to have

originated as a seedling tree in western New Jersey, dating back to colonial times,

the 1700s or perhaps even earlier.

A number of strains of Winesap are still available. My personal favorite is a

sport called Old Virginia Winesap, which has a dark red coloring and makes an

exceptional single-variety cider that I’ve described in my tasting notes as around

7.3% alcohol, medium gold in color, with an intense spicy, fruity, and floral aroma,

tropical fruit and bright citrus flavor notes, and a lingering acidity on the palate. In

short, complex and quite wonderful.

Because of its incredible popularity throughout the 19th century and up until

the 1950s, Winesap was widely grown all over the U.S., from New England to the

South, from the mid-Atlantic to Washington State, and everywhere in between.

Coxe first mentioned that the trees grew best on lighter (sandier) soils, but with the

current use of grafted rootstocks, it has proven widely adapted.

Another reason Winesap was gradually supplanted in the American

pantheon of apples is because some of its seedling descendants (Arkansas Black,

Black Twig, and Stayman) are considered better-tasting as dessert fruit, without the

distinctive vinous or “snappy” flavor of their parent.

An unapologetically American original, Winesap in recent years has made a

modest resurgence thanks to the renaissance of craft cider. But for home

orchardists who value a dependable variety that stores well in a root cellar or

similar space, it is still a classic and still worth growing.