Bite into a Honeycrisp apple and you understand why consumers are willing to pay so much for a piece of fruit: the crunch.
That’s no accident. In the pre-Honeycrisp era, apples had just two textures: “soft and mealy (that nobody liked), and then we had the good apples, the hard, crisp and dense,” said David Bedford, one of the original breeders of the Honeycrisp.
Unlike the vast majority of modern commercial produce, the Honeycrisp apple wasn’t bred to grow, store or ship well. It was bred for taste: crisp, with balanced sweetness and acidity. Though it succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, along the way it became a nightmare for some producers, forcing small Northeastern growers to compete with their massive, climatically advantaged counterparts on the West Coast.
The Honeycrisp wasn’t an immediate success. The original tree, known officially as MN1711, was discarded in 1977 over concerns about its winter hardiness. But Bedford, who joined the team in 1979, found four small clones that had miraculously escaped the garbage and decided to see if they’d yield fruit. “In 1983,” Bedford wrote in an email, “those small trees bore a few amazing fruit and the rest is history.”
The Honeycrisp variety is now so popular, consumers will spend three times the cost of other apples to experience it.
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So why do farmers put up with the hassle? They simply don’t have a choice.
The demand for this one apple exceeds supply—it’s all consumers, and therefore supermarkets, want. So growers are planting with almost reckless abandon, pulling out old varieties, like the tired Red Delicious, and putting in Honeycrisp trees—even in places where they don’t grow well.
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Still, the industry is on the lookout for the next Honeycrisp. Something just as delicious, but less troublesome to cultivate.
Broetje Orchards in Prescott, Washington, is devoting 10 percent of its 7,000 acres to the non-browning Opal, Paul Esvelt, the orchard’s post harvest manager, told Bloomberg at a New York City event to promote the fruit. That’s the same amount of space the grower sets aside for the Honeycrisp. Esvelt expects 3 percent growth for the Opal next year, while Honeycrisp acreage will remain stagnant.
Washington State University plans to introduce the Cosmic Crisp as early as next year, said Gallardo. Tangy, sweet and—as the name implies—crispy, the apple could account for 5 percent to 10 percent of the state’s production.