Apple review: Vista Bella

cattitude bought a few vista bella apples at the greenmarket Saturday, because they are new apples, from this harvest; they haven't been in storage for months.

It's a small apple, with red-and-green skin; that and the flavor makes me think there's mcintosh in its ancestry, though commercial mcintosh tend to be significantly larger. It's not as crisp as I'd ideally like, but it's the softness of a new, ripe apple that is naturally like that, not the mealy texture that many apples get with age. Worth trying, if they turn up near you before other apples of this harvest.

(Yes, August 7 is early for even an early apple to turn up in our local market; all the fruit has been early this year.)

ETA: orangepippin.com describes this <http://www.orangepippin.com/apples/vista-bella">an early dessert apple, and says it normally ripens in July in the northern hemisphere, making it perhaps the earliest apple of the season. Developed at Rutgers (New Jersey) in the 1950s.