Apple varieties beauty of bath
I plan to put up 20 or so short videos with some tasting and historical notes over the next 2 months about individual apple varieties that Julia and I grow on our Hampshire orchard, starting with the earliest to ripen.
Thought to be the earliest apple to ripen, Beauty of Bath used to be widely grown but is now rare. We planted a few trees as so many of our older customers asked for it, it reminded them of old times when fruit was seasonal and tasted of something. Ripe in late July/early August.
Raised in 1864 bry Mr George Cooling of Bath, near Bristol in England's west country and awarded a first class certificate of merit by the Royal Horticultural Society in 1887.
said to be fairly resistant to scab, a sharp and well flavoured apple but like all very early ripening apples it goes soft soon after picking and will not store. The globalised apple industry has no interest in such fruit.
The point of growing apples like this with a short season is that in the past it was not possible to refrigerate apples and move them in gas controlled containers thousands of miles round the world to defeat the ordinary seasons. Long term transport was not available, so there were more small orchards where the grower had a relationship with the local community. After peak oil, it will no longer be possible to grow fruit on globalised mega-orchards and refigerate it for months or transport it thousands of miles. That is why these old apples and their DNA mut be preserved.
Beauty of Bath is a good tree for a community orchard where the fruits can be shared when ripe and eaten within a few days. Not such a good idea for a small backyard orchard. If you only have space for 2 or 3 apple trees, you probably wouldn't want to grow this as it doesn't keep, but it is a very nice apple for a few days in high summer, especially if it is properly tree ripened. I also think it looks beautiful.
see also http://www.fruitwise.net/varieties.htm