Virtual Apple Tasting

Fruit-tree educator Susan Poizner from Orchard People talks about holding a virtual apple-tasting event.

Stop and smell the roses? Community event helps people to stop and smell…apples.

Susan Poizner recently helped 50 Torontonians to stop and smell…apples. Poizner, a fruit-tree-care educator and college instructor with a passion for growing fruit trees, organized a virtual apple-tasting event as a fundraiser for her local community orchard.

Virtual Apple-Tasting Event

Poizner visited an orchard specializing in heirloom apple varieties to get enough apples for 50 participants.

Participants received a paper bag containing the six apple varieties for the tasting. Each was marked with coloured stickers for identification.

To help participants think about what they were tasting, the event was facilitated by an apple sommelier, a researcher specializing in taste perception.

Poizner explains that researchers testing new apple varieties for consumer acceptance might consider upwards of 50 things.

For this event, participants were asked to share feedback on four things:

• Overall apple intensity

• Honey

• Floral

• Green-Herbaceous

Want to know more about apple tasting? Check out this Apple Tasting Wheel.

Apple Varieties

The tasting event took attendees to different parts of the world with six heirloom apple varieties.

1. Kindel Sinap (Turkey)

2. Cranberry Pippin (New England)

3. Baxter (Ontario)

4. Empire (New York)

5. Melrose (Ohio)

6. Horneburger Pancake (Germany)

Thinking of holding a tasting event? READ MORE about an apple-tasting event in this article.