WineCrisp apples

After 20 years of work, scientists at Purdue, Rutgers and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a crisp, firm, late-ripening apple that they have named the WineCrisp. They think it will appeal to consumers for its flavor and to growers for its resistance to the disease called apple scab.

But don’t look for WineCrisps in stores or farmers markets any time soon. The apple is available to nurseries who want to apply for a license to propagate trees and make them available to apple growers, according to a U of I press release.  If the growers graft the new apples onto fast-growing root stock, they could bear fruit in 3 years.

The new apple is a dull red, unlike the shiny — but relatively flavorless — Red Delicious.

In the press release, U of I plant geneticist Schuyler Korban describes the new apple this way: “It has an excellent mix of sugar and acid and a very pleasant flavor, but I was hesitant because of the finish - it’s not glossy.”

The color is rich but not bright. “It’s more of a dark red and looks like a deep red wine so we wanted to include ‘wine’ in the name.” It also resembles an older variety that consumers are familiar with called Winesap. “When you pick it up and squeeze it, it’s very firm,” he said. “We used to call it ‘the Rock.’ We wanted that characteristic to be in the name so we added ‘crisp’ and named it WineCrisp.