Heirloom apples make a triumphant return.

[FOOD&WINE]

Maybe the most tragic thing about the Red Delicious apple is that it started out with such promise. Born 120 years ago as the Hawkeye, a sweet, blushed yellow fruit so good it was rechristened Delicious, it was seized by men of science and meticulously transformed into the mealy, indifferently flavored and embarrassingly large fruit we know today. The Red part is not in dispute. But Delicious, we hardly knew ye.

That engineered pome, which in the 1980s accounted for three-quarters of the annual crop in the apple-rich state of Washington, put a generation of Americans off apples. True, it packed well and stored well and played its heroic role in the theater of postwar industrial agriculture. But fruits, like people, can’t be good at everything. Plant hybridists have to choose from the buffet of genes, and for the Red Delicious they picked the ones for color and longevity over flavor and crunch.

Affluence and the accompanying expectation of quality, coupled with the “slow food” movement, have produced in the apple-eating public a revolution against all that is represented by the monstrous Red Delicious. Sweet, crunchy Gala and Fuji are the new supermarket favorites. Behind them, a host of unusual varieties is forming for a sustained assault on tastelessness.

Meanwhile, in small orchards around the country, the originally delicious Hawkeye is enjoying a renaissance alongside heirlooms with names like Blue Pearmain, Arkansas Black and Opalescent. Tart apples like Winesaps and Newtown Pippins are making their way to market and winning loyal followings.

“We’re seeing people who want apples that have got flavor,” says Vince Gizdich, a third-generation apple farmer in Watsonville. “They have gotten so tired of the Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and Granny Smith in the store, and there’s so many other wonderful-tasting apples.”

For Nick Prevedelli, who helps his parents Frank and Sylvia run Prevedelli’s Farm in Corralitos, the phenomenon is summed up in people’s response to the Gravenstein, an Old World variety that flourished in California in the early 20th century. “When people talk about the Gravenstein, they say, ‘That apple reminds me of my childhood.’”

We may never see Calbel Blanc Winters and Carolina Red Junes in the produce aisles of the neighborhood grocery store. But then, 15 years ago no one would have predicted that Cherokee PurpleCK tomatoes would appear there, either.

“We’re probably a decade behind the heirloom tomato excitement,” says Neil Collins, owner of Trees of Antiquity nursery in Paso Robles, which specializes in heirloom fruit stock.

Lately Collins has witnessed a surge of interest in old varieties like the Spitzenberg, which was Thomas Jefferson’s favorite; the 17th-century Roxbury Russet, possibly America’s oldest apple; and England’s 13th-century jewel, the White Pearmain. “This year,” he says, “I’m barely able to keep up with apples.”