Apple varieties with the best flavour
Cox's Orange Pippin apple tree
The benchmark for flavour in apples, deserves a place in any enthusiast's tree collection.Fiesta apple tree
Fiesta (also called Red Pippin) is one of the best Cox-style apples, easy to grow, with a high quality aromatic flavour.Herefordshire Russet apple tree
A modern russet apple - directly descended from Cox and offering a sweet aromatic flavour.Kidd's Orange Red apple tree
Enthusiast J.H. Kidd came very close to Cox with this 1920s cross of Cox and Delicious.Laxton's Superb apple tree
Laxton's Superb is a deservedly popular English late-season dessert apple from the Victorian era.Rubinette apple tree
A modern variety, gets remarkably close to the flavour of Cox, with probably the best balance of sweet and sharp of any apple.Winter Gem apple tree
A Cox-influenced apple with a good aromatic flavour, and ripens usefully later than Cox.More about Apple varieties with the best flavour
Growing your own apple trees automatically gives you a head-start over shop-bought apples because you can pick your apples at exactly the right time to maximise their flavour - and most early and mid-season varieties are at their best when eaten straight from the tree.
Flavour is by no means the only quality to look at when choosing apple trees for your garden or community orchard, but for many gardeners it is, rightly, one of the main considerations. Although flavour is clearly very subjective, it is usually the case that the best apples have complex multi-dimensional flavours, rather than being simply sweet. In fact a degree of sharpness is often the hallmark of a good eating apple - the acidity is needed to balance and bring out the sweetness inherent in ripe apples.
Fortunately by an accident of climate and history, much of the United Kingdom is very well suited to growing apple varieties for maximum flavour. As a result some English apple varieties have evolved to offer the most complex flavours in the apple kingdom.
Many of these varieties arose during the Victorian era, a period of tremendous development in the cultivation of the English eating apple. These same varieties subsequently formed the starting point for renewed public interest in apples towards the end of the 20th century, with a new generation of apple growers consciously going back to the Victorian classics for inspiration, and as a starting point for the development of new varieties. As a result flavour is no longer the exclusive preserve of the old heritage varieties - some of the new varieties can genuinely rank alongside them.
There is no doubt that Cox's Orange Pippin is the premier English apple when it comes to flavour. In a good year from a good tree this variety goes beyond all others in the rich complexity of its aromatic flavours and has become the benchmark for apples around the world. However it is not the most reliable of apple varieties and is therefore best grown as a second or third tree in a collection, rather than being your only apple tree. There are now many other varieties to choose from if excellence of flavour is your main criteria - often descended from Cox's Orange Pippin but easier to grow. Comparing and contrasting the flavours of different but related apple varieties is one of the real pleasures of growing your own apple trees.
Several of these collections are available to buy - see our Orchard Packs.