An exciting announcement out of Britain: The “World’s First Red-fleshed Appleâ€, the Redlove Era, developed in Switzerland, will be available in markets in a year or so. The red color extends from the flesh into the apple to the core. Something new? Not!
It’s about time the red-fleshed apples hit the supermarket. Notice I said “apples†with an “sâ€. The Redlove is NOT the world’s first red-fleshed apple. Apple growers in the US, Canada and New Zealand have known about the red-fleshed and pink-fleshed apples for a long time. And there are many varieties. I know of a grower who has around 75 cultivars of these unusual apples.
Even in my small backyard orchard, there are five different red-fleshed apple trees and two pink-fleshed ones – all but one are good eating. The remaining one is an edible but fairly tart crabapple. Four of the red apples are red-skinned and one looks deceptively like an ordinary yellow-green apple until you bite into it and discover that it is red inside. Both pink-fleshed apples hide under a similar yellow-green exterior. All these apples are of American or Canadian origin, except the Niedzwetzkyana, which comes from Kazakhstan, the place where apples originated.
The Redlove is therefore not the world’s first red-fleshed apple. It will only be the first supermarket one.