December 14: Calville Blanc d’Hiver

France, 1598
aka White Winter Calville, Blanche de Zurich

This legendary apple variety was grown at Versailles in the 1600’s and we are lucky to be able to grow it here because it is a truly unique apple. It has more vitamin C than any other apple variety. Its lobed bottom makes it easy to identify, even in one of Monet’s paintings. Its color can range from ivory to yellow to green with small red blotches; add to it the sooty blotch on our apples and it’s an ugly duckling to be sure. But it has a stellar and long-lived reputation as a culinary apple and it’s one of the apple varieties that Zoë Francois chose to work with on her show, Zoë Bakes, when she visited the orchard in 2020 (find her show on Discovery Plus).

But enough about how it looks. Something I appreciate about this apple is that it has the highest-known Vitamin C content of any apple. It is tart and firm, even at this time of year when apples start losing their acidity and their texture. I grew enough of these this year that I was able to put them into a pie blend. They make a great contribution to flavor, but good luck peeling around those lobes on the bottom.

Read Adam’s Apples account of Calville Blanc.

Growing Notes

These trees grew here reluctantly at the beginning but once they finally established themselves, they’ve been bearing regularly. Their light-colored skin displays sooty blotch and flyspeck easily (cosmetic fungi) but clearly, nobody’s interested in this apple if cosmetic imperfections are a problem. I have read that it prefers long, hot summers, which is why, perhaps, it did so well this year.