Piata!

Piñata! I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

When I was a kid I thought that apples were apples. The Red Delicious was the only apple that existed and to a certain extent that was true. Our local market really only carried a couple of varieties and as a kid, it was an apple. Of course today there are a whole battalion of wonderful apples including the brand new Piñata!

PEPPERL: Piñata is an apple we’ve been growing now for probably 8-9 years and the test block made us determine we wanted to go ahead and get the rights to it. We started planning Piñata in a large scale maybe 5 years ago, 6 years ago. And of course as you know it takes a series of years to get apples to start producing.

Roger Pepperl, marketing director for Stemilt Growers in Wenatchee says the first actual crop of Piñata apples was only about 3 years ago and just last year was the first relatively large crop.

PEPPERL: It’s an apple out of Germany and it’s got 3 parentages to it. It’s got Golden Delicious in it. The best thing about Golden’s are is the skin is skin is thin on a Golden so when you eat a Golden you don’t have that chewy type skin that’s bitter. It has Duchess of Oldenburg in it which is an heirloom apple. But it adds that little bit of complexity to the apple that you just don’t know where that taste came from, that’s the Duchess of Oldenburg and then it has Orange Cox Pippin which gives it its really overwhelming flavor.

The bi-color apple is a bit hard to find but it is well worth looking for. Pepperl says it is really getting some good attention.

PEPPERL: Lot of consumer frenzy. It’s got its own Facebook page; it’s got its own website; it’s been on the food blogs; it been demonstrated at the Culinary Institute of America; it’s got a lot of fame going on right now.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.