I grew up in the apple producing capital of the world.
There is no such thing as a fresh apple in retail. They are all picked just before they are ripe and stored in massive cold storage rooms with all the oxygen pumped out. Apples can spend up to two year in storage, and the best tasting sweetest apples are often the ones that have been stored the longest because they form more sugars.
Your entire concept of when an apple is good or not boils down to the time between when the ethylene is pumped into the room to start ripening to when you put it in your mouth.
As with everything it depends. The heirloom varieties that make it to grocery stores (at least in the Bay Area) have a short enough window each year that they're definitely not being kept in cold storage for too long. The window of availability for something like Gravensteins and Pink Pearls out here is about a month.
The sweetest apples you're talking about are probably the mealy ones folks are complaining about (although some varieties are more prone to becoming mealy than others).
> The window of availability for something like Gravensteins and Pink Pearls out here is about a month.
The window for pretty much all apples is a few weeks. That is exactly why they all go to cold storage. If the growers don't pack them directly into storage the brokers and wholesalers will. Apples are worth more in the off season.
Unless you are shopping at a farmers market or a roadside stand, they have spent some time in a CA room.
> The sweetest apples you're talking about are probably the mealy ones folks are complaining about
Mealy apples are caused by the cell walls breaking down. The most common cause is refrigeration after they have been chemically ripened. Either spending too much time in the refrigerated grocery logistics chain or in your refrigerator at home.
Right. And out here the heirlooms I'm talking about are only in stores for a couple weeks (a month at longest)… because they're not likely being kept in cold storage.
> The most common cause is refrigeration after they have been chemically ripened.
We often experiment between organic and nonorganic apples, and in my experience, it seems like the organic apples are way more prone to being mealy, suggesting that it’s not (in this case) what you’re describing.
According to https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bk-2007-0956.ch020?cook... the antioxidant activity in apples gradually drops off after three months of storage in the cold. An apple stored for nearly a year will have almost no antioxidants remaining in it whatsoever.
This definitely fits with my experience that apples bought just before the seasons starts (so 11 months in storage) are not worth eating; and the best apples are the ones picked straight from the tree.
There is no such thing as a fresh apple in retail. They are all picked just before they are ripe and stored in massive cold storage rooms with all the oxygen pumped out. Apples can spend up to two year in storage, and the best tasting sweetest apples are often the ones that have been stored the longest because they form more sugars.
Your entire concept of when an apple is good or not boils down to the time between when the ethylene is pumped into the room to start ripening to when you put it in your mouth.