Our Variety Assessment

Its strengths, growing requirements and the conditions in which it performs best.

Gravenstein is an outstanding early apple with abundant juice and an intense aromatic flavour, excellent for fresh eating, sauces, pies and juice. It performs particularly well in cool and maritime climates. The fruit ripens unevenly and usually requires several picking rounds. Storage is short. As a triploid and poor pollinator, it needs two compatible apple varieties nearby.

Gravenstein

Price range: 26,50 € through 59,75 €

Gravenstein is a high-quality early-season eating and cooking apple, with an excellent strong apple flavour.

Choose your tree form

1 year old grafted tree – approx. 1–2 m

Half-standard – 1 to 1.5 m stem

Low-stem tree – approx. 60 cm stem

Standard tree – 1.8 m stem and over

Apple rootstock options

Bittenfelder – approx. 6 m mature height

EM9 – approx. 2.5 m mature height

M116 – approx. 4 m mature height

MM111 – approx. 4 m mature height

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Tree size guide

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SKU: 4319 Categories: Apple trees, Eating apple trees

Description

Gravenstein is undoubtedly a very old variety, and its origins are confused but there is clearly a strong association with northern Germany, Denmark, and Norway where it remains very popular – in 2005 it became the National apple of Denmark. In the 19th century examples were taken to both New England and California where it is still widely grown.

Although Gravenstein has never achieved great commercial success, it remains popular with apple enthusiasts around the world. The flavour, both for eating fresh and (especially) for cooking is unusually good for such an early-season variety.

Like most early-season apples Gravenstein does not keep that well but, usefully, the apples tend to ripen individually over the course of a couple of weeks so you are not necessarily faced with a sudden glut. (This lengthy ripening time is one of the reasons Gravenstein is not successful as a commercial variety, but is a plus for the home orchardist).

Gravensteins have a distinctive flushed colouring, which begins in mid-August as a few streaks of red, and spreads to cover the whole apple by the end of the picking season in mid-September.