Jazz is a very modern apple variety, developed in New Zealand in the 1980s. It is a cross between two other major apple varieties - Braeburn and Gala. Not surprisingly it has a lot of "shelf appeal", being a medium size, and a very attractive appearance. It is marketed as a "bi-coloured" apple, because the strong red/marroon colour is broken up by areas of green / yellow / orange. It tends to attract a premium price.
Jazz has a really excellent flavour, particularly if you like sweeter apples. The butter-yellow flesh is juicy, crisp and dense. There is a pronounced pear-drop sweetness, and very little acidity - a characteristic that can lead to blandness in Gala, but Jazz always has a good flavour.
(We have been advised by Steve T of New Zealand that the red colour is key to the unique Jazz flavour - poorly-coloured apples will taste like Braeburns).
Jazz is grown in New Zealand, France, and Washington state in the USA, with most commercial plantings only starting in 2000. Like a number of modern varieties it is trade-marked, and was developed in conjunction with a marketing agency - Enzafruit - which controls planting and marketing internationally. "Jazz" is actually a trademarked brand name, the variety name is Scifresh.
It tends to become available towards the end of the season - so in northern Europe it comes into shops in November/December. Because it is so new supplies tend to be limited, but this is supposedly a very long-keeping variety and therefore likely to be popular with producers. Jazz matures very late and has very dense hard flesh which benefits from softening slightly in storage. It will be interesting to see if the juicy flavour is retained in storage.
200,000 Jazz trees were planted in the UK in 2006 and should come into production in a few years. The trademark restrictions mean you are unlikely to find this tree available from fruit tree nurseries.
In summary, Jazz shows lots of promise as a future supermarket apple variety and hopefully will become widely available. The appearance and keeping qualities are very good, and it has by far the best flavour of all the mainstream supermarket apple varieties - indeed it is the only supermarket apple variety which makes it into our Top 10 Apple Varieties, where it comes in at a very respectable 5th place.
2008 update. Jazz has a new sibling - Kanzi! Read our review of Kanzi apple, including comparative photo.
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