STAMFORD APPLES
When it comes to varieties of apples, Stamford is renowned as an epicentre of epicureanism, with over 40 local varieties historically cultivated around the town. Many of those varieties have been lost over time, but Stamford Community Orchard Group is seeking to resurrect and preserve as many varieties as possible, even using techniques like DNA testing... Perhaps you have an apple tree in your garden. If so, do you know the variety of fruit it yields? It’s worth checking because among Stamford’s many other quirky facets - from its cameos in film and on TV, its role as the home of the Burghley Horse Trials, and its reputation as one of the best places to live in the UK - it’s also renowned as the home of a great many heritage apple varieties. Autumn sees Apple Day celebrated by the Stamford Community Orchard Group SCOG for short - and having enjoyed a bumper crop in their orchard in recent years, they’re also hoping for bumper support as they invite the public along to discover more about the area’s apple growing heritage. Modern practices in the livestock sector of agriculture favour commercial breeds which yield the most meat or milk, and grow the quickest. Likewise, our supermarkets stock few of the 2,300 different varieties of apple on display at Kent’s National Fruit Collection Kent, and the 7,500 cultivars of apples overall. The UK orchard fruit market is worth £681m, with 19,000 hectares dedicated to growing apples and pears. We produce just 575 tonnes of apples, then import 1,500 88
tonnes from the EU and 2,200 tonnes from outside the EU. Braeburn, Gala and Golden Delicious are the three most common varieties grown and sold in volume for the UK market, both at home and abroad. So, shockingly, only 14% of the apples we consume in this country are grown here, and what’s worse, sales of varieties traditionally associated with English orchards - Granny Smith and Cox - are down between 30% 35%, as supermarkets favour volume and uniformity over heritage. Take a Cox apple tree, in good health. Of the apples it produces, only 65% or so of the fruit harvested will be deemed ‘class one,’ the best looking, and the ones that the supermarket will sell to the consumer. For a modern variety such as Gala, that figure rises to as high as 90%. For that reason, the humble Cox has fallen out of favour, but worse still, many varieties have become all but ‘extinct.’ Fortunately, heritage apple varieties still have a few champions left fighting their corner, especially in Stamford, where a group of volunteers formed the Stamford Community Orchard Group around 16 years ago.
