In addition to our excellent cherry tree and lovely damson bush, we also have an apple tree. It doesn’t get quite as much love and attention as the others – perhaps because it stands far away (relatively speaking) in a corner of the garden, and its fruit become edible late autumn (October-ish) rather than during summer when we we’re all out in the garden all the time. But it does bear nice fruit.

Since we first ate its fruit we’ve wondered about what kind of apple it might be. Today we went to Rosendal’s trädgård to find out. This weekend they have their annual apple and pear show, which includes representatives from Sweden’s Pomological society who sit there and inspect people’s fruit and try to figure out what kind it may be.

We brought them five of our apples. They looked and they cut and they tasted and they consulted their books, and they concluded that our apple tree is a Gravensteiner. “Sweet, at first quite tart, very fine. Very old variety. Excellent both for eating and for cooking.”