CandyCrisp® Apples

No. ‘Candy’ is a separate, much older apple. The variety on this page is CandyCrisp®, whose cultivar name is ‘GRE-1198’ and whose plant patent is USPP 17,284.

The names are close enough to cause genuine confusion in searches and on farm-stand signs. If you are looking for the very large, very sweet, golden, pear-flavoured apple from Marlboro, New York, GRE-1198 is the one.

The registered trade name is CandyCrisp®, one word with a capital C in the middle. “Candy Crisp” as two words is extremely common on farm-stand signs, in shops and in searches, and it refers to the same apple.

Underneath the trade name, the cultivar is ‘GRE-1198’ — the designation Mark Greiner gave the seedling and the name on the plant patent. Neither spelling of the market name is wrong in any way that matters; both will find you the same very large, very sweet golden apple.

There is no commercial apple variety called Sugar Crisp. When people search for one, what they are almost always remembering is an unusually sweet, low-acid apple they ate once and could not name afterwards.

On this farm, that apple is nearly always CandyCrisp® — cultivar ‘GRE-1198’, the sweetest apple we grow, which is the highest published sugar figure of anything we grow. If a very sweet golden apple is the memory, this is the one to order.

Yes — “Cali Crisp” is a mishearing rather than a separate variety, and a common one. There is no California connection at all.

The apple is CandyCrisp®, cultivar ‘GRE-1198’, and it was found as a chance seedling in a cultivated orchard near Marlboro, New York, in the Hudson Valley. It is an East Coast apple through and through.

It marks CandyCrisp as a registered trademark — a protected brand name rather than a description. Trademarks cover the name and can be renewed indefinitely.

That is a different kind of protection from the plant patent, which covers the plant and runs for a fixed term from filing. USPP 17,284 protects the tree ‘GRE-1198’; the trademark protects the words you see on the box. An apple can lose patent protection and keep its trademark, which is exactly what happens to most modern varieties eventually.

Because they do different jobs. The cultivar name is the botanical identity — it goes on the patent, in nursery catalogues and in research, and it never changes. The market name is what a shopper is asked to remember.

‘GRE-1198’ is precise and unsellable; CandyCrisp is sellable and tells you something true about the fruit. The same split runs through the modern apple aisle: Pink Lady® is ‘Cripps Pink’, SnowSweet® is ‘Wildung’, RubyFrost® is ‘New York 2’, and Cameo is ‘Caudle’.

No. There is no documented relationship whatsoever, and the shared ending is marketing rather than ancestry.

Honeycrisp is a University of Minnesota release with a pedigree now established by DNA — Keepsake crossed with the lost selection MN1627. CandyCrisp is a chance seedling whose patent records its parentage as unknown. They could not be more different in how they came about: one the product of a decades-long breeding programme, the other a tree nobody planted.

No — different apples entirely, and the names cause constant confusion. Cosmic Crisp® is Washington State University’s ‘WA 38’, a deliberate 1997 cross of Enterprise and Honeycrisp, released in 2019, dark red, and firmly sweet-tart.

CandyCrisp® is ‘GRE-1198’, a chance seedling of unknown parentage found near Marlboro, New York, golden-yellow, and far sweeter with far less acid. If you want tart-and-crisp, Cosmic Crisp. If you want the sweetest apple in the orchard, this one.

No. Ludacrisp is its own variety with its own distinctive character — we grow both, and they are not related.

The “-crisp” ending has become an apple-marketing convention rather than a family name. Honeycrisp, CandyCrisp, Cosmic Crisp, Ludacrisp, EverCrisp, CrimsonCrisp and WineCrisp are seven different apples from at least five unrelated origins. A shared suffix tells you nothing about ancestry.

Because Honeycrisp changed what shoppers expect from an apple, and everyone who came afterwards wanted a piece of that association. Crispness became the headline virtue of the modern apple aisle, and the naming followed.

It is worth knowing that the suffix is marketing rather than pedigree. Of the “-crisp” apples we grow, only some have Honeycrisp anywhere in their ancestry — and CandyCrisp, with unknown parentage, has no documented relationship to it at all.

Sweet first and sweet last, with a distinctly pear-like quality that the patent names outright: “distinctive pear flavor, very sweet and mild”. There is honey in there too, and very little acidity to interrupt any of it.

It is the sweetest apple we grow — the highest measured sugar of any apple we grow. What people usually say after the first bite is that it does not taste like an apple is supposed to taste — more like a very ripe pear, or a sweet.

Yes — genuinely, and the patent says so in its formal description of the flesh: “Firm, crisp, very juicy”. This is not a soft golden apple wearing a crisp name.

The texture is dense and breaks cleanly rather than shattering in the coarse-celled way Honeycrisp does. Because the fruit is so large, a single bite carries a lot of juice with it.

Very. The patent’s own wording is “very juicy”, and in practice it is one of the juiciest apples we handle.

The combination people notice is juice plus size: a CandyCrisp is a genuinely large apple, so there is simply more of it per bite than a typical supermarket apple delivers.

Two reasons working together. It carries a great deal of sugar — the patent records exceptionally sweet, which is exceptional for an apple — and it carries very little acid to push back against it.

Perceived sweetness is a ratio, not a quantity. An apple with high sugar and high acid, such as RubyFrost, tastes sharp. CandyCrisp has the sugar without the counterweight, which is why the first bite reads as candy rather than fruit.

Golden — the patent gives the range as yellow-green 151A through to yellow 11B on the Royal Horticultural Society colour chart, sometimes with a soft greyed-orange blush (163B) on the sunny side.

It is not prone to russet, with at most a little in the stem cavity, which is unusual for a golden-type apple and part of why it looks so clean. The lenticels — the pale dots — are prominent and part of how you recognise it.

Large, and noticeably so — roughly ten ounces, about double a small supermarket apple.

That size is one of the traits the patent singles out as distinguishing it from other golden-type apples. In practice it means two apples to the pound rather than three, and a very generous single serving.

By published measurement, yes. The plant patent records exceptionally sweet, and nothing else in our orchard has a published figure near it — RubyFrost is 13.7, SnowSweet 13.45, Cameo 12.0.

Two honest qualifications. Very few apples have any published sweetness figure at all, so this is a comparison across the varieties that happen to have one — even Honeycrisp’s patent records none. And perceived sweetness is a ratio of sugar to acid, not sugar alone. CandyCrisp wins on both counts here: very high sugar and very low acid.

There is no official answer, because sweetness as you experience it is sugar divided by acid, not sugar alone. A high-sugar, high-acid apple like RubyFrost tastes sharp despite carrying real sugar.

Among the apples we grow, CandyCrisp is the sweetest by a clear margin. Fuji, Ambrosia and EverCrisp are the closest rivals in eating terms. The sweetness table above sets out what is actually measured and what is not.

For some people, genuinely yes — and it is worth saying rather than pretending everyone loves it. If what you value in an apple is a bright acid snap, CandyCrisp will taste flat to you. There is very little there to balance the sugar.

It is also the apple that converts people who say they dislike apples, because what they usually dislike is sourness. If you want the sugar with something behind it, try Cameo or Honeycrisp; if you want the opposite entirely, Granny Smith or RubyFrost.

It does, and that is not a marketing flourish — the plant patent itself specifies a “distinctive pear flavor” in its formal description of the fruit. Patents are dry documents, so a named flavour note in one is unusual.

The effect comes from very high sugar, very low acid and a soft aromatic quality, which together read to most palates as pear rather than apple. People frequently describe their first CandyCrisp as tasting “not quite like an apple”, and the patent agrees with them.

No. Sugar varies with the season, the orchard, how heavily the tree cropped and how mature the fruit was at picking. A lightly cropped tree in a sunny autumn produces markedly sweeter apples than a heavily cropped one in a wet year.

This matters more for CandyCrisp than for most varieties, because sugar is the product. It is also why growers thin the crop: the patent calls this a heavy bearer, and an unthinned heavy bearer gives you many small apples instead of fewer sweet ones.

Yes, noticeably. Cold suppresses the perception of sweetness and sharpens the sense of crispness, so a refrigerated CandyCrisp eats cleaner and less sugary than one left on the counter.

If you find it too sweet, eat it straight from the refrigerator. If you want the full pear-drop effect, let it sit at room temperature for twenty minutes first. Very few apples respond to serving temperature as clearly as this one does.

No — it is a golden apple. The patent gives the skin as yellow-green (RHS 151A) through to yellow (11B), sometimes carrying a soft greyed-orange blush (163B) on the side that faced the sun.

That blush is why some people remember it as pink-cheeked, but the ground colour is firmly yellow. If you are looking for a red apple with comparable sweetness, Fuji or Ambrosia are the ones to reach for.

Large — roughly ten ounces, and close to double a small supermarket apple.

Size is one of the traits the patent explicitly names as distinguishing GRE-1198 from other golden-type apples. Practically, expect two to the pound rather than three, and expect a whole one to be a generous portion — more than many children will finish.

Yellowish cream — the patent pins it as RHS 11D. Paler and creamier than a white-fleshed apple like SnowSweet, and part of the golden-apple character.

It is firm, fine-grained and very juicy, and it holds that pale colour reasonably well once cut.

It is the best apple on this farm for exactly that person. Most people who say they do not like apples are describing sourness, and CandyCrisp has essentially none — the patent calls it “very sweet and mild” and records no acidity figure at all.

It is what we hand to sceptical children and to adults who have written apples off. The pear character helps too: it does not taste like the sharp apple they are expecting.

The plant patent makes no browning claim at all, and CandyCrisp is a low-acid apple, which is the opposite of what slows the reaction down.

Browning is driven by an enzyme, polyphenol oxidase, that works more slowly in acid conditions. Apples that resist browning tend to do it either through high acidity, like RubyFrost, or through an inherited quirk selected for on purpose, like SnowSweet, whose patent calls the flesh “unusually resistant to oxidative browning”. CandyCrisp has neither. For a platter you are cutting ahead, use one of those two; for CandyCrisp, a light toss in lemon or salted water does the job.

This is what the variety is for. Very large, very juicy, firm, and sweeter than nearly anything else in the orchard — if you are eating an apple out of hand and you like sweet fruit, this is the one.

It is also the apple we hand to people who say they do not like apples. Nine times out of ten what they dislike is sourness, and CandyCrisp has essentially none.

Usable, with one real caveat. The flesh is firm enough to hold its shape, so slices stay slices and do not collapse into sauce.

The problem is acid, or rather the near-absence of it. A good baked apple dessert needs some sharpness to survive the sugar and the heat, and CandyCrisp brings almost none — the patent describes it as “very sweet and mild” and publishes no acidity figure at all. Bake it alone and you get something sweet and slightly flat. Blend it, or add lemon generously.

Yes, and it makes a notably pale, very sweet sauce that needs no added sugar whatsoever — which is the main reason to use it.

Finish it with a real squeeze of lemon. Without acid the sauce tastes cloying rather than fruity, and CandyCrisp supplies none of its own. Cooking it half and half with a tart variety is the better route if you want a sauce that tastes of apple rather than of sweetness.

Very good. Apple butter is a long, slow reduction, and starting from an apple this sweet means you reach a rich, concentrated result with far less added sugar than a standard recipe assumes.

Add lemon or cider vinegar to the pot. Hours of cooking flatten flavour, and without acid a CandyCrisp apple butter can end up tasting like sweetened puree rather than like apples.

Yes, and it produces exceptionally sweet juice — a very sweet, very mild apple is exactly what makes a rich pressing.

On its own that juice is one-dimensional. Blend it with something sharp — GoldRush, RubyFrost or a crab apple — and the CandyCrisp supplies body and sugar while the other supplies the structure that makes it taste like cider rather than syrup.

Eating fresh, before anything else — out of hand, in lunchboxes, sliced onto a cheese board, cut into a salad where its sweetness plays against something salty or bitter.

In the kitchen it is genuinely good for applesauce, apple butter, drying and juice, all of which benefit from starting at exceptionally sweet and needing no added sugar. Where it needs help is anywhere acidity matters: pies, crisps and caramel apples all want either a lemon or a tart apple blended in.

Yes, and usually a lot less. Starting from exceptionally sweet, most recipes can have their sugar cut by a third to a half, and plenty of applesauce batches need none at all.

The adjustment that matters more is the other direction: add acid. Cut the sugar and increase the lemon. Without it, a cooked CandyCrisp dish tastes sweet but strangely blank, because there is nothing for the sweetness to play against.

Only as part of a blend, and we would rather steer you than sell you the wrong apple. The texture is right — firm flesh that holds its slices through a long bake. The flavour is not: a pie made entirely from CandyCrisp tastes sweet and oddly flat.

Use roughly one-third CandyCrisp for sweetness and body, two-thirds something sharp — Northern Spy, RubyFrost, GoldRush or Granny Smith. For a single-variety pie, Northern Spy is the classic answer.

Yes. The flesh is firm and dense enough that wedges and slices stay recognisable through an oven, which puts it ahead of most golden-type apples for tarts, galettes and baked halves.

Shape is only half of what a baking apple needs, though. The other half is flavour that survives the sugar, and that is where CandyCrisp wants help — see the baking answer above.

It is one of the best apples we sell for that, for a simple reason: children who reject apples usually reject sourness, and CandyCrisp has essentially none.

The one thing to plan around is size. A whole CandyCrisp is a lot of apple for a small child — halves or wedges usually come home eaten where a whole one comes home with two bites out of it.

Yes, and the sweetness is an asset here rather than a limitation. Against blue cheese, bitter leaves, a sharp vinaigrette or salty ham, a very sweet apple is doing a job that a tart one cannot.

Slice it thin and keep the skin on — the golden skin looks good and it is not tough. Dress close to serving, or toss the slices lightly in the dressing to hold their colour.

As a sweet component in a blend, yes — and a valuable one, because very sweet fruit is exactly what a cider maker is short of.

On its own it makes a flabby cider. Sweet cider from CandyCrisp alone is pleasant but one-note, and a hard cider needs the sharpness that this apple simply does not have. Blend it with GoldRush, a russet or a crab and it earns its place.

Very well, and this is an underrated use. Drying concentrates sugar, and a fruit starting at exceptionally sweet finishes almost confectionery-sweet — genuinely closer to a sweet than to a dried fruit.

Slice an eighth of an inch thick and dry at 135°F for six to ten hours until leathery rather than brittle. A brief lemon dip keeps the rings paler if appearance matters.

Honestly, it is the wrong apple for the job — and this is the one place we would steer you elsewhere. A caramel apple works on contrast: sweet caramel against a tart apple. CandyCrisp is nearly as sweet as the caramel, so the whole thing collapses into one flat note.

Use Granny Smith, the traditional choice, or RubyFrost. Save the CandyCrisp for eating.

Yes. Peel, core and slice, freeze the slices in a single layer on a tray, then bag them once solid so they do not fuse into a block. They keep for months and go straight into pies, crisps and sauce.

Freezing will not preserve the fresh-eating texture — ice crystals rupture the cells, and thawed slices come back soft. Given how long CandyCrisp keeps in a refrigerator, most people never need the freezer at all.

Very late — the patent gives late October into early November, and that is among the last pickings of our whole season.

It needs every day of that hang to build the sugar the variety is known for. Fruit picked early is noticeably less sweet and does not catch up in storage. See Harvest Times for where this season actually stands.

Refrigerate them, in a crisper drawer or a loosely closed perforated bag. Cold plus humidity is what preserves both the crunch and the juice.

Keep them away from onions and other strongly scented foods, and pull any bruised fruit out before it spoils its neighbours. A counter fruit bowl costs you the texture within about a week.

Picked very late — late October into early November, per the patent, which makes it one of the last varieties off our trees. The eating season then runs from that harvest through the winter as the crop comes out of storage.

That late hang is not incidental; it is where the sugar comes from. Fruit picked early is markedly less sweet and never catches up. See Harvest Times for where the season stands, or Ready to Ship for what is leaving the farm today.

Yes, and the patent makes a specific claim about it: fruit of ‘GRE-1198’ “does well in storage, without the tendency to wrinkle that is common in other golden-type apples”.

That wrinkling point is the interesting one. Golden apples typically have thin skin and lose moisture in store, so they shrivel at the shoulders after a few months. CandyCrisp resists it, which is why it can be sold well into the new year still looking like fresh fruit. In a home refrigerator expect months rather than weeks.

Refrigerate, in a crisper drawer or a loosely closed perforated bag. Cold plus humidity is what holds both the crunch and the juice, and it is what makes the difference between weeks and months.

Do not wash them before storing — surface moisture invites rot. Keep them away from onions and other strongly scented foods, and take out any bruised apple before it spoils the ones around it.

Much less than most golden apples, and the plant patent calls this out as a distinguishing trait — “without the tendency to wrinkle that is common in other golden-type apples”.

Wrinkling is moisture loss through the skin. Golden-type apples are particularly prone to it, which is why a Golden Delicious three months out of store often looks tired at the stem end. CandyCrisp holds its surface far better, which is most of why it can be sold as a winter apple at all.

Because it is picked once a year, very late, and sold from storage until it runs out. There is no second crop and no import stream for this variety — what New York growers pick in late October and early November is the entire supply.

It stores well, so the season runs a good way into the new year, but it is finite. If nothing is listed above, the crop is either still on the tree or already sold.

Somewhat, yes — it is a very large, very juicy apple with thin skin, and that combination is more easily marked than a small tough-skinned one. It travels well when packed properly and badly when tipped into a bulk bin.

It is one reason CandyCrisp does better as a farm-shipped and farm-stand apple than as a supermarket one, and why we pack it the way we do.

The variety is naturally a big, energetic tree. The patent describes it as “extremely vigorous” with an upright habit and calls it a heavy bearer — three words that together mean a lot of wood and a lot of fruit.

Final height is set by rootstock rather than by the variety: 20 to 25 feet on a standard, 12 to 15 on semi-dwarf, 8 to 10 on a dwarfing stock such as M.9 or a Geneva series. Given that vigour, a home grower should choose a dwarfing rootstock and plan on annual pruning — an upright vigorous tree will run away from you otherwise.

Yes. Like nearly every apple, CandyCrisp is not self-fertile and needs pollen from a different variety flowering at the same time. The patent places its bloom at the same time as Golden Delicious, which puts it squarely in the mid-season group.

Good partners include Golden Delicious, Gala, Fuji, Honeycrisp, Empire or a flowering crabapple. Do not rely on a triploid such as Mutsu or Jonagold — they produce poor pollen and cannot fertilise anything.

It means the tree will set more fruit than it can ripen well, and that thinning is not optional. The patent calls CandyCrisp a heavy bearer on upright limbs, and an unthinned heavy-bearing tree gives you a large crop of small, less sweet apples.

Since sugar is the entire point of this variety, thinning matters more here than on most. Fewer apples per spur means more sugar in each one, and it protects next year’s crop from the biennial swing that heavy bearers are prone to.

From a licensed nursery — Stark Bro’s sell it as an exclusive, and several other mail-order nurseries carry it. The plant patent was granted in December 2006 and ran its 20-year term from filing, so propagation has been controlled for the life of that patent.

Honeycrisp.com is an orchard, not a nursery: we ship the fruit, not the trees. If you are here for apples to eat, see Ready to Ship.

It came out of the Hudson Valley in New York — cold winters, a long autumn — and nurseries generally list it for roughly USDA zones 4 to 7.

The bigger constraint is the length of the season rather than the cold. CandyCrisp is picked in late October and early November and needs every day of that hang to build its sugar, so it is a poor choice anywhere hard frost arrives in early October.

A medium CandyCrisp — about 292 grams — is roughly 145 to 160 calories. A small one is nearer 115 to 130; a large one runs 170 to 195.

The figure to work from is 52 calories per 100 grams, from USDA, for a raw apple with the skin on. CandyCrisp is both very sweet and very large, so a whole one carries a good deal more than a standard medium apple.

A large CandyCrisp of about 350 grams comes to roughly 170 to 195 calories.

Across the sizes we pack: small (~235 g) about 122, medium (~292 g) about 152, large (~350 g) about 182. Multiply the weight in grams by 0.52 for a close estimate at any size.

A small CandyCrisp of about 235 grams is roughly 115 to 130 calories.

A kitchen scale beats guessing from the word on the bag — and the apple count on a case is the quickest guide, since a 72-count fruit is considerably larger than a 125-count.

Per 100 grams of raw CandyCrisp with the skin on: about 52 calories, 13.81 g carbohydrate, 2.4 g fiber, 0.26 g protein, 0.17 g fat, 107 mg potassium and 85.56 g water.

For a medium apple of about 292 grams that is roughly 152 calories, 40 g carbohydrate and 7.0 g fiber. The full table by size is in the nutrition section above.

About 37 to 43 grams of total carbohydrate in a medium apple, of which roughly 7.0 grams is fiber — so approximately 33 grams of net carbs.

Per 100 grams that is 13.81 grams. That is typical for an apple.

Roughly 40 grams of total carbohydrate in a medium apple, with about 7.0 grams of that being dietary fiber.

Essentially all of an apple’s calories are carbohydrate — there is almost no fat and, in this cultivar, about 0.26 grams of protein per 100 grams.

About 28 to 32 grams in a medium apple, all of it the fruit’s own — nothing is added. That is 10.4 grams per 100 grams of fruit.

CandyCrisp is the sweetest apple we grow, with a distinctive pear-like flavour and almost no tartness to push against it. If you like a straightforwardly sweet apple, this is the one.

About 7.0 grams in a medium apple with the skin on — 2.4 grams per 100 grams.

That is about average for an apple. Peeling costs you roughly a third of it.

Very little of either: about 0.8 grams of protein and 0.5 grams of fat in a medium apple, and virtually no sodium.

Apples are almost entirely water and carbohydrate — CandyCrisp is about 85.56 percent water by weight.

About 107 mg per 100 grams, so roughly 312 mg in a medium apple.

That is typical for an apple.

About 13.4 mg in a medium apple — 4.6 mg per 100 grams.

Apples are not a major vitamin C source next to citrus; an orange carries roughly ten times as much. What there is sits mostly just under the skin and degrades with heat, so a raw unpeeled apple retains more of it than a baked one.

For fiber, yes — roughly a third of it sits in the skin, along with most of the fruit’s colour compounds.

CandyCrisp skin is thin and, per the patent, “not prone” to russet, so there is no texture reason to peel it. Leave it on for eating and salads. Rinse under running water and rub with your hands before eating, as with any fresh fruit.

Roughly two large, three medium or four small apples make a pound — three medium is the standard working assumption in American recipes.

CandyCrisp is a very large apple, so expect two to the pound rather than three. A 9-inch pie takes five.

By flavour, the closest are the other very sweet, low-acid apples: Fuji, Ambrosia and EverCrisp. Of those, Fuji is the nearest on sugar and Ambrosia the nearest on that honeyed, low-acid character.

By appearance, it reads as a golden apple, so people reach for Golden Delicious — but it is markedly sweeter, much larger and, per the patent, does not wrinkle in storage the way golden types tend to.

Sweetness and acid, mainly. Honeycrisp is sweet-tart and bright — there is real acidity giving the sugar something to work against, and the texture is the famous coarse-celled explosion. CandyCrisp is sweeter and far milder: exceptionally sweet, almost no acid, with a pear note the patent names outright.

Three other practical differences. CandyCrisp is noticeably bigger than a typical Honeycrisp. It is picked weeks later, in late October and early November. And it is golden rather than mottled red. Despite the rhyming names there is no documented relationship between them at all.

CandyCrisp, clearly. Honeycrisp is sweet too, but it carries an obvious tartness that CandyCrisp simply does not have.

That acidity is exactly why many people prefer Honeycrisp — it tastes balanced and refreshing where CandyCrisp tastes like a sweet. Sweeter is not the same as better; it depends entirely on what you want from the apple.

Both are sweet and low-acid, so the choice comes down to size, texture and season. Fuji is dense and hard with a fine grain and a straightforward sugary flavour, and it is available almost year-round.

CandyCrisp is considerably larger, juicier and carries the pear note. It is the sweeter of the two. The catch is availability: Fuji you can buy any week of the year, CandyCrisp only after a very late harvest and only while the crop lasts.

They are close cousins in character, and both are chance seedlings. Ambrosia is honeyed, aromatic and low-acid with a fine, crisp texture and a pink-over-yellow skin.

CandyCrisp is bigger, juicier and sweeter still, and where Ambrosia reads as honey, CandyCrisp reads as pear. Ambrosia is the more elegant apple; CandyCrisp is the more startling one.

By flavour, Ambrosia and Fuji — both very sweet, both low in acid, both aromatic in a soft rather than sharp way.

By appearance, people reach for Golden Delicious, since both are golden-yellow. That comparison misleads on eating: CandyCrisp is much sweeter, much larger, and per the patent does not wrinkle in storage the way golden types characteristically do.

No. It is a golden-type apple and the patent compares it against golden-type fruit, but it is its own cultivar — a chance seedling of unknown parentage, not a Golden Delicious selection or sport.

The patent distinguishes it from other golden types on four counts: larger size, crunchier texture, sweeter taste and later maturity, plus the resistance to wrinkling in store. CandyCrisp stands on its own as a distinct cultivar.

Then CandyCrisp is not the one for you. Try RubyFrost, Granny Smith, Northern Spy or GoldRush, which is the sharpest thing we grow.

If you want a middle path — real sweetness with acidity still present — Cameo, or Honeycrisp, are the ones to try.

CandyCrisp, and it is not close. It is sweet in a way that surprises people, with a distinct pear note and almost nothing tart to push against it.

After that, Fuji and EverCrisp. If you want the other end of the scale, Granny Smith or Northern Spy.

They share an origin story and almost nothing else. Both are chance seedlings of unknown parentage found in commercial orchards — Cameo at Dryden, Washington, CandyCrisp near Marlboro, New York — and both were kept because a grower was paying attention.

On eating they are opposites. Cameo if you want balance and perfume; CandyCrisp if you want sugar.

On the published evidence, yes.

The two also differ in how the sweetness arrives. Fuji is dense, hard and straightforwardly sugary. CandyCrisp is larger, juicier and carries that pear note the patent names, so it reads as sweet and perfumed rather than sweet alone.

A very large, very sweet golden apple, sold as CandyCrisp® and known botanically as the cultivar ‘GRE-1198’. It was found — not bred — as a chance seedling in a cultivated orchard near Marlboro, New York, and patented as USPP 17,284 in 2006.

Its distinguishing traits, from that patent: exceptionally sweet, a “distinctive pear flavor, very sweet and mild”, harvest in late October and early November, and storage that resists the wrinkling common to golden apples.

‘GRE-1198’ — the designation Mark Greiner gave the seedling, and the name under which it is protected by US Plant Patent 17,284.

The “GRE” is for Greiner. Breeders and finders routinely number their selections this way, and most numbers never become anything; this one did. CandyCrisp® is the trade name layered on top for the shop shelf.

Mark Greiner, who is the named inventor on US Plant Patent 17,284. The patent records that he found it “as a chance seedling of unknown parentage in a cultivated orchard near Marlboro, N.Y.”

Finding an apple is a real skill rather than luck alone. Orchards throw up volunteer seedlings constantly and nearly all of them are worthless; the work is in noticing the one that is not, and then committing years to proving it.

In a cultivated orchard near Marlboro, New York, in the Hudson Valley — one of the oldest continuously farmed fruit districts in the United States, growing apples since the eighteenth century.

That is the whole recorded origin. There was no breeding programme, no cross, no research station. A seed germinated where nobody planted it, and Mark Greiner noticed the tree.

Unknown. USPP 17,284 describes GRE-1198 as “a chance seedling of unknown parentage”.

You will sometimes see it linked to Red Delicious, or assumed to be a Golden Delicious seedling because it is yellow. Skin colour is not ancestry.

There is no evidence for it. The story circulates because chance seedlings are usually found in commercial blocks, and commercial blocks in that era were often Red Delicious — so proximity gets retold as parentage.

The patent records the parentage as unknown and says nothing about Red Delicious. This is the same error we correct on our Cameo page, where a seedling found among Red Delicious trees is described everywhere as a Red Delicious cross on no evidence at all. Where a tree grew tells you nothing reliable about which pollen made it.

No. CandyCrisp is a chance seedling — a naturally pollinated pip that germinated on its own in a New York orchard — and every tree since has been produced by ordinary grafting.

Nothing about it was engineered, and there is no engineered version of it. In breeding terms it is about as traditional as an apple can be: found, not made.

It means a tree that grew from a seed nobody planted deliberately, with parents nobody recorded. Bees move pollen, a pip ends up in the ground, and years later there is a tree bearing fruit unlike anything around it.

Apples do not come true from seed — every pip is a fresh genetic shuffle — so this is how varieties arose for most of history. McIntosh, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith and Cameo were all found this way. CandyCrisp is a recent addition to that list.

By grafting, and only by grafting. Wood cut from the original tree is joined onto a rootstock, and the resulting tree is genetically identical to the parent. Every CandyCrisp in existence is a clone of that one Marlboro seedling.

Planting its seeds would not work: the offspring would be new varieties, almost all of them poor. That is why a found apple has to be propagated rather than bred, and why a variety is, in a real sense, one tree endlessly copied.

It is the US plant patent covering the apple tree ‘GRE-1198’, filed on 17 March 2005 and granted on 19 December 2006, with Mark Greiner as the named inventor.

A plant patent gives the holder the exclusive right to propagate the plant — it protects the tree rather than the fruit. It is also the single most reliable public document about any modern apple: the size, the colour codes, the harvest window and the storage behaviour quoted on this page all come from it.

US plant patents run twenty years from the filing date, and this one was filed on 17 March 2005 — so the term is at or near its end.

What changes when a plant patent expires is only who may propagate the tree. The CandyCrisp® trademark is separate and can be renewed indefinitely, so the name stays protected even when the plant does not. It is the same position Cameo is in: patent expired in 2013, trademark alive.

In the Hudson Valley, on the west bank of the river in Ulster County, roughly seventy miles north of New York City — and squarely inside one of the oldest fruit-growing districts in the country.

The Hudson Valley has grown apples commercially since the eighteenth century. It is exactly the kind of long-settled orchard landscape where a chance seedling has the time and the surrounding pollen to appear at all.

A Hudson Valley orchardist, and the named inventor on US Plant Patent 17,284. The “GRE” in GRE-1198 is his name.

His contribution was noticing. A volunteer seedling in a working orchard is a nuisance, and the ordinary response is to pull it out. Greiner tasted the fruit, kept the tree, gave it a number, and put in the years of propagation and evaluation that turn one odd tree into a variety anyone can buy.

From late autumn, once the very late harvest is in, and then for as long as the crop lasts. Because CandyCrisp is picked in late October and early November, it arrives after most of the season’s apples.

If nothing is listed above, the crop is still on the tree or the season has ended. Check Harvest Times, or see Ready to Ship for what is leaving the farm today.

Here, in season, shipped from the farm — and otherwise almost entirely at orchards, farm stands and farmers’ markets, mostly in New York and the Northeast.

It is not a supermarket apple, and the next answer explains why. If nothing is listed above, the crop is either still on the tree or the season has ended: check Harvest Times, or see Ready to Ship for what is leaving the farm today.

Yes — we ship fresh apples across the country, with some destination restrictions and some weather-driven seasonal limits, since hard freezes and extreme heat both affect what we will send and when.

Our shipping information page covers packing, timing and destinations. For a specific state or delivery date, call 518-695-4517 or email [email protected] and we will give you a straight answer.

Three reasons, none of them about how it eats. It is picked very late, after the autumn retail push has already been planned and stocked. It is large and thin-skinned, so it marks easily and does not survive bulk-bin handling well. And it has never had a national marketing programme behind it the way the club apples do.

The result is an apple that is excellent and regional. It turns up where someone is handling fruit carefully and selling it close to where it grew — which is to say, at orchards, and here.

Yes. Cases are sold by apple count rather than by piece count, because a case is a fixed weight — a 72-count case holds 72 larger apples, a 125-count holds 125 smaller ones.

CandyCrisp is a large apple, so it packs in the lower counts: expect fewer, bigger apples per case than you would get from a Gala. Our general apple FAQ explains apple-count sizing across every variety we grow.

Yes, and it is one of the better gift apples we grow, precisely because it is unfamiliar. Most people have never eaten one, and a very large golden apple at exceptionally sweet makes an impression that a box of a variety they buy weekly does not.

We pack gift boxes and can include a note. Availability depends on the season, since the harvest is very late; call 518-695-4517 or email [email protected] and we will tell you what is actually ready.

Yes — mixed boxes are one of the best ways to buy, and with CandyCrisp especially, because pairing it against a tart apple shows off what it does.

A box with CandyCrisp for sweetness and RubyFrost or GoldRush for sharpness covers both ends of the spectrum, and gives you the blend you need for pie into the bargain. See our apple mixers, or call and we will build one.

Most photographs on this site are stock images intended to give a general idea of a product, not pictures of the specific fruit you will receive. Apples are a natural product and colour, size, shape and minor cosmetic marks vary from tree to tree and season to season.

What we will promise is the variety, the grade and the count. If you want to know what this week’s fruit actually looks like, call and ask — someone who has handled it will tell you.

No — Honeycrisp.com is an orchard, not a nursery. We grow and ship the fruit.

CandyCrisp trees are sold by licensed nurseries; Stark Bro’s carry it as an exclusive and several other mail-order nurseries stock it. If it is apples to eat you are after, see Ready to Ship.

They sit above commodity apples and below the licensed club varieties. There are real costs behind that: it is a patented variety, it is picked very late when the season’s labour is winding down, and it is a large thin-skinned apple that needs careful packing rather than bulk handling.

What you get for it is size and sugar. Judged per apple rather than per pound, it is good value.

Call 518-695-4517 or email [email protected]. We are an orchard, so the person who answers has actually handled the fruit and can tell you what this week’s crop is like.

Our general apple FAQ covers washing, handling, storage and apple-count sizing across every variety we grow, and shipping information covers packing and delivery timing.