You can easily identify a Kandil Sinap apple with a single glance, as it looks like no other. Its green-red color mixture is unremarkable, no different than a Pink Lady, but its tall and slender shape is unforgettable. The Salt Spring Apple Company describes it as “an otherwise average-looking apple on an extreme diet.” Specialty Produce describes it as a crunchy and particularly juicy variety with a sugary aroma and a flavor that balances sweet and sour. This one-of-a-kind fruit traces its origins to the Black Sea region and is believed to have sprung from a natural mutation.
Specialty Produce notes that there is an ongoing debate over whether the first Kandil Sinaps came from Turkey or Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Regardless of the exact origin, it was most widely cultivated by Crimean Tatars in the 1700s. Unfortunately, Crimea’s turbulent history in the last century has greatly reduced the availability of Kandil Sinap apples. In 1944, the Stalin regime exiled roughly 180,000 Tatars from Crimea (via the Ukrainian Institute of America). No group of people had played a bigger role in cultivating Kandil Sinap apples, and in an instant, they were gone. Specialty produce notes that the subsequent spread of faster-growing European apple varieties soon supplanted the Kandil Sinap, turning this once-common fruit into a rare specialty.
