Sharp · 3 trees planted · confidence high
A small to mid-sized russet with honey-green skin, an orange blush and dense, nutty, intensely aromatic flesh with high acidity. WSU Mount Vernon holds it on G935 and classifies it as a sharp cider apple. University trials in Vermont and Ontario found it among the highest-sugar cultivars tested at 18.3 Brix (about SG 1.075), with titratable acidity well above common dessert cultivars and the only cultivar in that trial with yeast-assimilable nitrogen above the 140-350 mg/L optimum - unusually favourable fermentation chemistry.
Disease: Moderate disease resistance; blooms late enough to escape most frosts. WSU records standard bearing, upright-spreading habit and a low blind-wood rating of 1.0. Poor cold hardiness - trees were lost at Montana WARC to the 2020 cold event. Triploid, so it needs two diploid pollinators and contributes no usable pollen.
Discrepancies: Bearing: WSU records alternate bearing as No, against a widespread reputation as a shy and irregular cropper. Recommended low per WSU, the local trial. Class: recorded as SH per WSU rather than dessert, correcting the common nursery framing as a connoisseur eating apple - it is both, but the cider role is sharp. SG 1.075 is converted from the 18.3 Brix reported in the UVM/Guelph trials, not a directly published gravity, and WSU holds no juice chemistry for this cultivar at all. Bloom group 4 comes from RHS/Cummins; WSU has no bloom date, so unlike the other WSU cultivars here it is not locally calibrated.