Crab · 10 trees planted · confidence medium
Recorded as Fake Puget Spice because the orchard's trees were purchased as Puget Spice but are believed mislabeled — every attribute below describes what Puget Spice should be, not necessarily what is growing. True Puget Spice is a small (1.70 inch) WSU-bred cider crab that its breeder classifies as BITTERSHARP: WSU measured tannin 0.13%, malic acid 0.96%, pH 3.28, SG 1.057, 13.5 Brix, with a perfect 5/5 bloom density and 5/5 productivity, upright habit, standard bearing and no alternate bearing. WSU tasters describe high acidity and high astringency, straw colored, a great blender providing mouthfeel. It blooms very early (mean 4/25, the earliest in this planting) and needs a pollinizer.
Disease: True Puget Spice is scab immune and mildew resistant — its main selling point for maritime western Washington, and the single easiest diagnostic here. If these trees show scab, that is direct evidence of the mislabel.
Discrepancies: Nursery copy is substantially wrong about this variety and WSU — the breeding program that released it — contradicts it directly. Nurseries describe Puget Spice as high in tannic acid with a juice profile similar to Kingston Black, usable as a single-varietal. WSU's own data shows tannin at just 0.13%, which is BELOW WSU's own 0.2% threshold for the bitter classes; the fruit is bittersharp because of very high acid (0.96% malic, pH 3.28), not because of tannin. Recommended tannin as low and acidity as high on WSU data, and reframed its blending role as acid and astringent mouthfeel rather than tannin. Second conflict: Raintree says early season ripening in September, WSU records mean harvest 10/15 — used the WSU date. Third: Raintree calls it bloom group 2 while WSU's mean bloom date of 4/25 is the earliest of any variety here, consistent with group 1-2; kept 2. All of this describes the true variety, which these trees probably are not, so treat the whole record as a reference target for identification rather than as a description of the orchard's fruit.