Frequin Tardive de la Sarthe

Although not necessarily its true French name, Frequin Tardive de la Sarthe is a late-ripening, French bittersweet. It was sent to the USDA collection in Geneva, NY from Long Ashton [cider] Research Station in the UK in 1987. The town of Sarthe is in southwest France, close to the border with Spain’s Basque Country. We believe that the apple is likely one of the thirteen Frequins listed in Bore and Fleckinger’s Pommiers a Cidre Varietes de France, possibly Frequin Barre or Frequin Rouge Petit. The Geneva cultivar (PI 589689) has been DNA profiled. The results were not a match to any known cultivar but do confirm that it’s almost certainly a French apple. It’s ancestry includes two well-known French cider apples, Bisquet (known as Michelin in the UK) and Marin Onfroy.

We planted two trees of Frequin Tardive de la Sarthe in 2014 and 2015. We obtained the scionwood for these trees from the USDA collection. The fruit is small (5cm/2”), round-conic, roundish or distinctly conic, yellow with a faint wash of orange stripes and blush, a very shallow cavity with a medium-large, russet splash around the stem, sometimes with a shallow, obtuse basin and other times with a medium-deep, abrupt basin. We press ours in mid-October. Currently growing at Super Chilly Farm.