An apple is an apple is an apple? Apple exhibition and variety identification with the pomologist Hans Joachim Bannier from Bielefeld.

There are  at least 160 different apple varieties to see, including long-established as well as newly bred, well-known and almost lost dessert, cider and commercial apples from all regions of Germany. Admission is free.

You have the possibility to have your own fruits determined by a variety expert from the Pomologen-Verein. Please bring 3-5 apples or pears free of maggots, preferably picked on the sunny side, from your tree. A determination costs 2,50€ per variety.

Who still knows them, the old varieties? The beautiful one from Nordhausen, the large Kasseler Renette  or the Muskatellerbirne disappeared in the last decades almost imperceptibly from the gardens, from the waysides and the meadows of our domestic landscape. And with them disappears the cultural heritage of many old varieties that our ancestors have used, carefully guarded and propagated for centuries. With them, valuable characteristics (e.g. disease and pest resistance, climate and site adaptation) have also been irretrievably lost. Some of the old varieties are only known to us from descriptions and stories told by our parents or grandparents.
Progressive specialization in a few standard varieties, combined with the development away from the long-lived standard tree to the short-lived bush and spindle tree, the gradual disappearance of home-grown fruit as a result of the supply of "standardized" supermarket fruit and targeted political measures such as deforestation premiums, have caused genetic erosion of unprecedented proportions in fruit growing.
The conservation of old fruit varieties is not just about preserving a cultural asset and saving genetic resources, but also about a diversity of sensory experience beyond industrial mass production. Anyone who has ever experienced the scent of a full-juiced Gravensteiner, the spicy aroma of a freshly picked Prinzenapfel or the fruity-aromatic taste of a Berlepsch will find the ever-same range of Elstar, Jonagold, Delicious and Gala apples monotonous and lacking in flavor. If you're looking for good apples for baking cakes, you'll find them in Riesenboiken or Jakob Lebel, the old economic varieties whose fruits are just as unavailable in stores as the Weiße Klarapfel and the Bismarckapfel, the apples for the best applesauce. Good apple juice is obtained from cider varieties such as the Rheinischer Bohnapfel, the Graue Herbstrenette or regional varieties such as the Westfälische Tiefblüte. Some varieties, such as the tasty Finkenwerder, lack only the standardized, marketable "outfit" that wholesalers and consumers mostly expect today. The small bright fruits of the Red Starrenette - also used by some as Christmas ornaments - can teach us that a variety of pleasing to the eye and palate (still!) exists outside EU standards on minimum sizes.
You can rediscover these varieties and talk shop with Hans Joachim Bannier from Bielefeld about apple varieties and cultivation.

Further information from: hans bannier <alte-apfelsorten[at]web[dot]de>
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