Welcome to Orange Pippin

If you are interested in apple varieties, pears, cherries or plums, or orchards where these fruits are grown, you have come to the right place.

Our website is named after England's most famous apple variety - Cox's Orange Pippin - widely regarded as the finest of all dessert apples. 'Pippin' is an old English word derived from the French word for 'seedling', and like many old apple varieties Cox's Orange Pippin was discovered as a chance seedling.

Recent variety reviews

You can add your own comments on any variety page.

• Apple - Opal (Seabrook)

  28 Feb 2021  Angela,  ESSEX, United Kingdom

  Just to say Lidl are selling Opal which gave me a chance to try them. They looked like Golden Delicious so I was prepared to be disappointed but they are lovely - a decent size, extremely juicy with just the right amount of tartness to give flavour. A good apple. I’m going back to buy more while they still stock them! Unfortunately no grower info apart from the fact they are British Apples Red Tractor 73/78 mm

• Apple - Golden Spire

  27 Feb 2021  Kristian KøVener,  AGDER, Norway

  Even in Norway, homeland of damp, cool weather, including infrequent summers, this cultivar, more or less, every second year, displays impressive elongated fruits of enjoyable fresh taste, comparable to the high, but rare autumn blue skies.

• Apple - Fuji

  23 Feb 2021  Jess,  CA, United States

  I’ve tried so many apple varieties and honestly Fuji is consistently the best for plain apple eating and to chop up and add to salads. As a rule, we keep our apples in the crisper drawer of the fridge. On a hot day there’s nothing like a crunchy, juicy bite into a chilled Fuji apple. It’s mildly sweet, tart and very refreshing. I pick out the best apples by testing the “give” in their flesh at the store. If I can easily make a thumbprint, I toss em back for the apples that don’t easily give under hard thumb pressure. Many apples have a bitter aftertaste to the skin but not Fuji. You can’t go wrong with these apples!

• Apple - Empire

  21 Feb 2021  Helen Kershaw,  MERSEYSIDE, United Kingdom

  Hands down my favourite apple variety. It's unfortunate that it's difficult to find in shops in the UK. I've just stumbled upon some in a butcher's shop, of all places, after an absence of several years. Firm and crunchy, the sweetness is not as overpowering as the near ubiquitous Pink Lady. I wish I had the extra land area to try growing this myself. My daughter has just discovered this apple for herself and has become as firm a fan of it as I have

• Apple - Cosmic Crisp

  14 Feb 2021  Lingoln,  CALIFORNIA, United States

  I had two opportunities to taste this apple. The first was early in 2020 when this variety first became available. After that tasting, I would have rated it at 5 out of 5 stars, hands down. It was by far the best-tasting apple that I'd bought from a grocery store in many years, blowing all of the other commercial varieties out of the water. The texture was extremely crisp and juicy as promised, and the flavor was very sweet, very tart, and a tad more complex than the watery storebought apples. I would have still picked a good farmer's market apple over this, but that's not the class these apples fall under. HOWEVER.... I bought a few this year (early 2021) when I saw them available again, expecting them to be just as good as last year. I was extremely disappointed with the apples I got. They tasted completely bland with no tartness, just moderate single-note sweetness, absolutely no complexity, and a texture that was technically still crisp but not at all enchanting. The skin even felt a bit soft and when squeezed the apple seemed slightly spongy and wilted. In short, they tasted exactly like an apple that has been sitting in storage for over a year that's lost all of its flavor and appeal. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if the apples I'm seeing in stores now are from the same harvest as the apples I bought last spring. This was my biggest concern with this variety, and what I suspect may be its downfall: they're most likely a delicious, reliable apple when sold fresh off the tree, but since they were specifically bred to have an exceedingly long shelf life, most of what you can find in stores will have been stored for many, many, many months. I would still happily buy this apple fresh from a farmer's market or even grow it in my yard when they become available, but I won't be buying any more from the grocery store.