The pink apple’s history goes back at least to Ancient Rome—but its future is a little less certain.
On a warm April day, with poplar pollen cruising through the air like snowflakes in midwinter, Graziella Traini welcomed me to her farm in Montedinove, in the heart of Marche, a hilly region half the size of Tuscany, in central Italy. All around, towns and farmhouses stood on hilltops like meerkats scanning the horizon; as far as I could see, man-made structures blended with forests and sunflower fields, with winding roads drawing gentle lines in the landscape. Traini offered me a glass of water on the terrace of her stone house and pointed to small blossoming trees a few hundred meters away. There. At 67, the farmer is one of the few people who still cultivate the pink apple of the Sibillini mountains.
Wearing pink-gray glasses and a broad smile, Traini led me to her barn, trailed by her white cat and her husband’s stare, chatting all the while. Cheerful for the visit, she said she inherited the fields from her father—himself a farmer—and proudly told me that she’d been driving a tractor since she was 15.
Wooden cartons, tires, and tanks framed the walls of the deposit. In the center of the room sat plastic crates, conserving the few thousands pink apples left from last year’s harvest. Sizes varied from ping-pong balls to ripened oranges, the apples a mix of green and yellow touched by shades of pink and red. Anything but uniform, a bit wrinkled and shrunken, they came in semblance and shades that might be defined as “ugly”—some carried the form of a deflating mini balloon, while others wore brown scars. But after being harvested in October 2021, and after six months of resting in the open air, they were also something else: in their prime, perfect for a midmorning snack.
“They hate the fridge,” Traini said, plucking a tiny fruit for me to try, adding that, while these apples can be eaten right off the tree, the fruit ages and improves in flavor over the months. (According to Traini, if a pink apple is rotten in a basket, its thick and resistant skin prevents it from infecting its neighbors—so much for the 14th-century Latin proverb, “a rotten apple spoils the barrel.”)
I accepted the apple, its skin slightly sticky. I polished it on my pants and took a bite. An intense aromatic perfume hit my nose, and I was surprised by the apple’s sharp crunch, so many months after being harvested. It was sweet, tart, and delicious. I took one more.
Three decades ago, finding such an apple would have been nearly impossible. Once a staple food and source of vitamins during winter for the communities of this hilly territory, for decades, the pink apple had all but vanished. But then, Traini said, poof: “It exploded, and now everybody wants this apple.”
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Today, there are roughly 20 registered producers of pink apples scattered around the Sibillini mountains territory, but Gentili, the agronomist, thinks that there might be many more that just aren’t part of the pink apples producers’ association. All in all, the total acreage of a few dozen hectares of pink apples is negligent compared to other crops like sunflowers, grapes, or wheat. But according to Gentili, the small production is having an effect on the territory. Besides selling apples, producers make cider, vinegar, jellies, and other derivative apple products. Every November, Montedinove organizes the annual pink apple fair, and the town mayor allegedly always carries a pink apple with him to institutional meetings. Perhaps most importantly, Gentili said, is that the fruit has attracted younger farmers and entrepreneurs.
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https://www.afar.com/magazine/in-marche ... ink-apples