Apple tasting notes

We decided to try a bunch of apples and make notes about what we found. There are easily 10 varieties of apples for sale even at the tiny Safeway grocery in Half Moon Bay, and yet we didn’t feel we knew very much about them, often eating apples without paying much attention, so it seemed like a fun experiment to be more explicit and attentive to the process.

Here are our thoughts:

Fuji
bright
crunchy
no sour bite
non-descript flavor

Rome
sour
dry
mealy
don’t seem good for eating – maybe for cooking

Gala
crisp
similar to McIntosh?
bright
slightly sour

Braeburn
sour
fibre-y
crisp

Jonagold
not crisp, slightly mealy
not sour
gently sweet – almost dry

Pink Lady
perfume-y
crisp
dry
sweet & sour
not bright

Obviously this was not very scientific – we didn’t know what terms we would use to describe them until we started. Interesting to see what kind of vocabulary is needed to describe and categorize a the more subtle aspects of a sensory experience. We didn’t develop any idea of shadings of an adjective, such as sour – how sour? Relative to another apple, or absolutely?
We also only dealt with one sample of each apple type, so perhaps we weren’t eating a variety at its peak.

Fun to try, regardless.

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