Go, Go Gold Rush!

There may not be much more to be said about Gold Rush that you don’t know already, but we’ll give it a try with a bit of interesting apple history…

Gold Rush is a variety out of the Purdue Rutgers apple breeding program (using natural plant sex methods, NOT GMOs!). The breeder decided to discard Gold Rush because it ripens so late in the season that most growers would not want to deal with it. However, the assistant to the breeder loved the apple and, using buds from the original tree, saved Gold Rush from the dump heap!

Over time, more and more people discovered and fell in love with Gold Rush, and so ta da…here we are!

However, it does still ripen very late in the season. We often do not finish picking them until the second week of November. So… frost (and late-season massive hurricanes!) can be a major concern. Because of this, many growers who do have Gold Rush pick them earlier in the season when they are still too green. Of course, if Gold Rush is picked green, it doesn’t taste like much of anything but green apple. It also does not keep for months like the properly-ripe apples do.

We want Gold Rush that taste mighty fine (ok, we’re a bit selfish here…because that’s what WE want to eat!). So we take the risk, year after year, and let Gold Rush get properly ripe. Some years it’s no problem, and other years we have sent a lot of the apples to the ‘seconds’ bin due to cracking from fall frost or too much rain.

But we feel that good, ripe Gold Rush are worth their weight in gold…so enjoy!

PS. We also have used Gold Rush as a parent in our own apple breeding projects, so some of those NSO star-named apples can thank good lucks and great flavor to this amazing apple!

If you haven’t staked your claim yet in this year’s Gold Rush Rush,