Variety Portrait: Wintercalville

the name fires the imagination and takes us on a journey to a cold land beneath a blanket of snow \u2013 a journey that Wintercalville actually made: when news of this superb dessert apple reached the Tsar's court in St. Petersburg and the Meraner Calville-Exportgesellschaft delivered it there.

The apple\u2019s family tree can be traced back to the Middle Ages. Presumably originating from Normandy, Wintercalville was long widely cultivated and highly sought after, even in the highest circles. It could also be found in the orchards of King Louis XIII in Orleans. In France, this apple \u2013 which has become rare here \u2013 is still regarded as a gourmet apple, served for dessert and used for apple cake.

The Wintercalville tree is delicate and needs rich, good, warm soil, which we can offer it on Ritten.

The flesh of the apple is yellowish, tender, very fine and loose, fragrant with aromas of white peach and juicy yellow plums. Gently pressed, it yields a characterful, unmistakable mountain apple juice.

A look back at history: The year is 1898.

In many places, the work of draining and cultivating the floodplains and bogs in the Adige Valley has been completed. It is widely known that vines and fruit trees bearing the finest dessert fruits thrive here as hardly anywhere else.

On an autumn day in October.

It is a special fruit that has just ripened in the orchards of the Pinzenau estate near Merano. The magnificent Wintercalville glows yellow, here and there tinged with red, from the tall apple trees. Its flavour is exquisite; it is also called the "King of Apples". Fruit pickers climb wooden ladders and place the fruits into sacks fastened at their sides. Then the apples go into wooden crates.

Meanwhile, at the Meraner Calville-Exportgesellschaft, they wait impatiently for this precious dessert variety. From here it is dispatched to all corners of the world. Piece by piece and with the utmost care, each luxurious fruit is wrapped in tissue paper. They are traded individually, not by the pound or kilo. Unimaginable: a single apple of the finest quality costs up to three Austrian crowns.

Well packed and accompanied by women in Tyrolean costume, the apples travel on two-wheeled carts and larger farm wagons over the Brenner Pass to Munich and Vienna, to the table of the imperial family. The Tsar\u2019s court in St. Petersburg is also an important buyer.

Johann Prokop Mayer, pleasure and flower gardener and author of the Pomona Franconica, described the apple in 1801 as follows: \u201cThe White Wintercalville has such an exquisite wine-like flavour that one believes one is eating pineapple, or strawberries dressed with champagne.\u201d