Why heritage varieties still earn their place

Walk into any supermarket and you will meet perhaps half a dozen apples, most of them bred for uniformity, shelf life and the ability to survive a lorry journey. Step into an old English orchard instead and you might find dozens of varieties with names that sound like villages, landowners and long-forgotten harvests. These heritage cultivars — broadly, those raised before the twentieth century — were selected for flavour first and foremost, because they were grown to be eaten, cooked, baked, roasted or fermented within a few miles of the tree.

That local selection is why the old apples taste so distinctive. A russet carries a nutty, pear-drop richness. A Ribston Pippin hits you with something closer to pineapple. Growing them is not mere nostalgia: it is a way of keeping regional orchard traditions, and the wildlife that depends on them, alive in your own back garden.

A taste of the old counties

Almost every English county once had its own famous apple, and many survive in national collections and specialist nurseries. A few worth knowing:

• Egremont Russet — raised in Sussex in the 1870s. Small, dull gold, thick-skinned, with a dense, dry flesh and a flavour of nuts and honey. It ripens in late September, stores into December and makes excellent juice.
• Ribston Pippin — from Ribston Hall in North Yorkshire, around 1707, and the parent of Cox's Orange Pippin. Intensely rich, with a pear-drop and pineapple character and a hint of the russet bite. It is a triploid, so it needs two compatible pollination partners, and it can be a shy cropper in cold gardens.
• Ashmead's Kernel — a Gloucestershire apple from about 1700, heavily russeted and lumpy, with a sharp-sweet, intensely aromatic flesh. It keeps until January and improves in store.
• Blenheim Orange — raised at Woodstock in Oxfordshire, a large, round, dual-purpose apple. Eat it fresh in October or cook it down to a fluffy purée. Triploid again, and it bears fruit on the tips of its shoots, so pruning needs a light touch.
• D'Arcy Spice — an Essex variety, harvested very late and best left until it has had a frost. In a warm, sheltered spot it develops a spicy, almost clove-like note. It stores until spring.
• Keswick Codlin — a Cumberland cooking apple that crops heavily in August and collapses quickly to a sharp, pale fluff. Perfect for a late-summer crumble.

Bringing a heritage tree into your garden

Order bare-root trees between November and March and plant them while they are dormant. The rootstock decides the eventual size, so choose it before you choose the variety.

• M27 — very dwarfing, roughly 1.2–1.8 metres. Good for a large pot or a tiny patio, but it needs staking and careful watering.
• M9 — dwarfing, about 1.8–2.5 metres. The classic choice for a small garden or trained cordon.
• M26 — semi-dwarfing, 2.5–3 metres. A sensible all-rounder.
• MM106 — semi-vigorous, 3.5–4 metres. Tolerates poorer soil and makes a fine half-standard.
• M25 — vigorous, 4.5 metres and upwards. Use it for a traditional standard in a paddock or community orchard.

Check pollination before you buy. Most apples flower in groups numbered 1 to 6 (sometimes lettered A to F), and varieties in the same group, or adjacent groups, overlap enough to cross-pollinate. Triploids such as Ribston Pippin and Bramley's Seedling cannot pollinate anything, including themselves, so plant at least two other varieties nearby. In a small garden, a family tree or a self-fertile variety will save space.

Thin heavy crops in late June or early July, leaving one fruit roughly every 10–15 centimetres. This reduces biennial bearing — the frustrating habit of cropping heavily one year and sulking the next. Store fruit in a cool, dark, slightly humid place at 2–4°C, in a single layer on slatted shelves, well away from other ripening produce.

Cider, perry and the orchard year

In the West Country and Herefordshire, the orchard was never only about eating apples. Cider fruit is classified by acidity and tannin: sharps are high in acid, bittersharps combine acid with tannin, sweets are low in both and bittersweets are rich in tannin with little acid. Kingston Black, a Somerset bittersharp, is prized for a single-variety cider, while Dabinett and Yarlington Mill are the backbone of countless blends. A good cider is a marriage of sharp, sweet and bittersweet juice, fermented slowly through the winter.

Traditional orchards are also havens. The gaps between standard trees are grazed or left as rough grass, and the dead wood supports beetles, fungi and mistletoe, while the blossom feeds bees in May.

Keeping the tradition growing

The old orchard year still turns on a few familiar rituals. Wassailing, traditionally on Twelfth Night, involves carrying a jug of cider to the oldest tree, pouring it on the roots and hanging cider-soaked toast in the branches to encourage a good crop. Community orchards, county collections and local variety groups have revived many of these customs, and they are the best place to see which apples genuinely thrive on your soil and in your rainfall.

Start with one tree, learn its habits, and you will soon be grafting your own. A Ribston Pippin planted this winter may outlive you — which is, after all, the whole point of a heritage variety.