ISSUE 86, LOST FRUITS WORTH FINDING, Part 1: Kentucky Red Crab Apple
Kentucky Red Crab Apple
Crab Apples are an important element in traditional cider, providing the bright ping note at the top of the beverage’s taste. The larger the crab apple, the easier to process, and the greater the contribution to the fermentable juice. The Kentucky Red Crab was the largest known North American-bred crab apple. Sometimes simple called the Red Crab in regions in which it was grown, its suitability to cider-making resulted in it being one of the few crabs that rarely made its way into the jelly pot. In the middle 19th century, it was the favorite cider apple of the western Appalachian region. Grown intensively in Kentucky and Tennessee, it won a reputation for imparting clarity and edge in cider. Smith's Nursery and Fruit Farm in Franklin, TN characterized the variety in these terms: "Tree vigorous, very hardy and immensely productive; fruit small, red, keeps well till spring, and can be made into very superior cier any time during the winter" (Catalog 1894, p. 13.] It was also esteemed as a dessert crab, able to keep in the cellar over winter with minimal degradation of character.
The Kentucky was originally a seedling that sprouted in the late 1820s in the orchard of John Harpool outside of Bowling Green, Kentucky. It was subsequently propagated by grafting among fruit growers interested in having trees with the flavor quality of the Hewes crab apple in a fruit substantially larger in size. Creighton Lee Calhoun's Old Southern Apples notes that its popularity waxed in the 1880s when the Indiana Pomological Society and other groups took notice of it.
Unfortunately the tree proved vulnerable to several forms of blight, so the southern fire blight invasions of the mid-20th century halted its propagation, as orchardists sought blight-resistant varieties. Creitghton Leigh Calhoun listed the variety as extinct in Old Southern Apples. But the extensive plantings suggest that surviving trees probably exist in old fields in the upland South. Its size and quality make it an item that the current generation of cider makers crave.