Calville Blanc D’Hiver Apple Trees

• Sharp
• Good for single varietal cider
• Hardy to zone 4

Calville Blanc is one of the world’s great cooking apples, noted for its distinctive sharp spicy flavor. Like many good culinary apples, Calville Blanc produces a good juice with a sharp but balanced flavor. It adds a pleasant acidity and rich aroma to cider blends.

Calville is a large medium apple with pronounced, even exaggerated, ribbing. It is yellow tinged with green and there is a partial blush over perhaps a quarter if the peel. Large green lenticels are prominent though not in the blush. Calville Blanc flesh is light yellow with a tender crunch, fine-grained and dense. Its flavor balance tilts slightly to the tart but there is sweetness too, to frame pear flavors with a hint of banana in the finish. There are also some unusual salty, mineral notes. The fruit has more vitamin C than an orange.

The Calville Blanc is the gourmet culinary apple of France, excellent for tarts and holds its shape when cooked.  Grown by Le Lectier, procureur for Louis XIII; the Calville Blanc continues to be served in fine Parisian restaurants today. Calville Blance was also grown in the garden at Monticello in the 1770’s by Thomas Jefferon.

Calville Blanc can be grown successfully in most of the apple-growing regions of the USA. It bears fruit from an early age. In cooler regions it should be planted in a sunny location.
When grown in Europe Calville Blanc is considered a tree of slightly weak vigor but many growers in the USA find it relatively more vigorous – however in either case cropping is generally good though not spectacular.