What Makes Specialty Apples So Special?

If you’ve been out to our U-Pick location on Ridge Road in Medina, you might know that we have two different price points for our apples.  We have our Specialty Apple prices (Honeycrisp, SweeTango, SnapDragon, RubyFrost, and EverCrisp), and we have our Classic Apple prices (every single other variety we grow).  The Specialty prices are higher, and everyone always wants to know why.  What makes these Specialty Apples so special?  There are actually a few different reasons.  

The first, and probably the most official reason, is that most of these apple varieties are very tightly controlled in the market.  These apples are grown by a select number of farmers – any Joe Farmer down the street cannot just buy some trees of these varieties and grow them.  Let’s use SweeTango as an example…  

SweeTango was developed at the University of Minnesota, the result of a controlled cross between Honeycrisp and Zestar apples (I’ll talk about controlled crosses in another post).  After the University of Minnesota realized they had produced a phenomenal apple, they patented the variety and then partnered with a grower cooperative called Next Big Thing (or NBT) to market it.  NBT named the apple, trademarked the name, and then opened the variety up to only the growers who were a part of the cooperative to grow and sell the apple.  These growers were sought out by the cooperative (because of their reputation in the industry), offered a spot within the cooperative (for a price!), and then ONLY those growers were allowed to grow and sell SweeTango apples.  We are lucky enough to be a part of the NBT cooperative, but it’s not cheap!  We paid to be a part of the cooperative and we also pay royalties on the fruit that we grow and sell.  There are strict guidelines about how we grow and sell this variety of apple; for example, we are only allowed to sell SweeTangos directly to the consumer – either through our Upick location or through farmer’s markets.  Every other SweeTango that we grow must be sent off to an official SweeTango packing house to be combined with other Sweetangos from other growers within the NBT cooperative and sold simply as “SweeTango Apples” NOT LynOaken Farms SweeTango Apples.  The reasons for all of these guidelines are quality control (to make sure that all SweeTango apples grown and sold are held to the high standards expected of such a delicious apple) and to not flood the market (if anyone could grow and sell SweeTango apples, there would be a LOT more SweeTango apples on the market and their value would go down).  

Stem-clipping Honeycrisp apples

There are several different cooperatives of growers in the apple industry.  And each one is searching for the next best apple to hit the market.  Honeycrisp (also developed at the University of Minnesota) was so incredibly popular that it created a huge boost to the apple industry and has become the gold standard to which most new apple varieties are compared.  The patent on Honeycrisp apples did eventually expire and now anyone CAN grow a Honeycrisp tree.  The problem is – Honeycrisp is notoriously finicky to grow and store.  While some apple varieties grow thickly on healthy robust trees, withstanding some degree of disease and insect pressure, producing reliable crops every season with relatively few issues during and post-harvest – Honeycrisp are the high-maintenance divas of the apple world.  Honeycrisp trees are weaker, they don’t hold nutrients well and they require a high level of attention to stay healthy and fruit-bearing.  Honeycrisp trees also tend to crop more biennially  – meaning they give a pretty decent harvest one year, and the next year they’ll give a noticeable, markedly lower crop yield.  And Honeycrisp apples themselves are fragile – they have thin skins that puncture or wound easily (in fact, when we harvest Honeycrisp apples, every single apple stem is clipped below the shoulder of the fruit so the stems don’t puncture the skins of the apples around them as they’re harvested, making for a very slow and expensive harvest).  In addition, they can have a lot of post-harvest disorder issues causing a very low pack-out rate (when we’re running apples over our packing line, we expect about 10-15% loss per bin due to unmarketable fruit – Honeycrisp has around a 70% pack out rate, meaning we’re sending more Honeycrisp apples to juice than any other variety).  For all of those reasons, Honeycrisp is a very expensive apple to grow.  So even though the patent on Honeycrisp has expired and they’re no longer tightly controlled in the market, their retail price remains high because they are just so expensive to grow.  

But the final reason why these Specialty Apples are so special (and probably the one that matters most to apple lovers like you and me) is they’re just so damn good!  All of those things I mentioned above would mean diddly squat if the apples themselves weren’t worth every single penny. The apples that command a higher price deserve that status.  They have been selected for their optimum texture, their incredible juiciness, and their superior flavor.  And sure, there are better apples for baking.  Of course, there are less expensive apples for applesauce.  But when you want to eat a superb apple, when a delicious snack is what you’re after, I challenge you to find a better choice than these Specialty Apples.  They are absolutely delicious and, at the core, don’t we all just relish the simple pleasure of delicious food?

Stop by our U-Pick location at 10609 Ridge Road in Medina now until November 5th to try a free sample of all of our in-season Specialty Apples!

-Katie