Acclaimed chef slates NZ apples as flavourless

File photo / Hawkes Bay Today

Kiwi apples have been slated by an acclaimed British-based chef as flavourless and full of sugar.

Raymond Blanc, who has received two Michelin stars for his Oxfordshire restaurant Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, said New Zealand apple varieties including Gala, Braeburn and Jazz were only tasty because of their high sugar content.

"We say these apples are the tastiest, but what makes them tasty is the sugar," Blanc said in an interview with Britain's The Sunday Telegraph.

"The Jazz and the Pink Lady are not great apples. They have been engineered on sweetness, shapes, colours and resistance to disease. But mostly sugar, sugar, sugar.

"It's wrong. That's not the definition of a good food. We are addicted to sugar and the retailers know it," Blanc told the paper.

"Our taste is now so neutralised that we identify taste with sweetness.

"Sugar is not a good taste. For any great taste, you need contradictions, a mix of sweet, sour, acid, bitter or salty."

Blanc said he preferred British heritage varieties like Cox's Orange Pippin, which he said had a more complex flavour.

"They have this beautiful balance of acidity, sweetness and perfume."

Blanc also complained that 70 per cent of Britain's apples were imported, when the country had the "best climate" for growing the fruit. He said he was growing 115 varieties in a five-hectare orchard he planted three years ago.

However Andy Borland, managing director of Scales Corporation, which owns Hawke's Bay apple company Mr Apple and last year exported more than 4 million cartons of apples, said it was the first time he had received such feedback.

"We sell a lot of apples and we never get that sort of feedback. In fact the opposite, a lot of people say our apples from New Zealand have a great taste profile," Mr Borland said.

"I'm not sure of the actual metrics of what sugar content they have. [They're] natural sugars obviously."

Mr Borland said the company measured the brix -- or sugar content -- of the apples due to customer specifications and Gala, Braeburn and Jazz were far from the sweetest end of the spectrum.

English Cox's were at the tarter end.

"They very much suit the English taste profile and European whereas... there's no demand for those sorts of apples in the likes of Singapore or Thailand.

"They're classified as a very traditional variety but almost [are] getting old fashioned now."

Auckland nutritionist Amanda Foubister said the sugar content of apples changed as they aged, and depended more on ripeness than variety.

"If you had an over-ripe Granny Smith versus a Rose apple that was under-ripe than the under-ripe Rose apple's going to have a lower brix [sugar] level," she said.

"I'd never say that an apple is bad for you."

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