I don't know if children still dook for apples any more but the association between apples and Hallowe'en remains unchanged, if only because they both come into season at the same time.
Any child who does go dooking will probably not notice it, but the shop-bought "British" apples floating in the water awaiting the jab of a playful fork, or being baked in the oven as a Hallowe'en treat, will certainly not be Scottish. Despite it being the most popular fruit in the country, it is virtually impossible to find a Scottish-grown apple for sale.
There are plenty of delicious English-grown traditional varieties available now for a limited time while in season, but the vast majority - about 70 per cent - are imported from France, Italy, Chile, America, New Zealand and South Africa. Just last week the French chef Raymond Blanc said our national sugar addiction is the reason sweet imported apples such as Gala, Jazz and Pink Lady are more popular than the more tart English Cox.
This is perplexing, because it is not as if apples have never been grown in Scotland, as both eaters and cookers. Au contraire. For centuries, Scottish apples were a thriving international industry, highly prized for their flavour, before being relegated to virtual oblivion thanks to the arrival of supermarkets and their policy of bulk-buying cheaper foreign imports. The Carse Of Gowrie was particularly fruitful as far back as 800 years ago, with 50 recorded orchards producing such Scots varieties as the James Grieve, Bloody Ploughman, Cambusnethan Pippin and Tam Montgomery, but as the years rolled on some of the old Scots apple trees could not match the yields of more modern varieties; nor could they compete with the sweeter Golden Delicious and Granny Smith. Farmers gave up the ghost and grew more profitable crops. For years there have been only a handful of orchards left with commercial potential.
The problem is not new: in 1885 the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society held its first apple "congress" to revive the fortunes of the old Scottish orchards and expand Scottish production. The exercise was repeated as recently as 2009, when ideas were invited on how to reinvigorate planting and consumption.
Some nine years ago I met John Butterworth, the Lancastrian founder of Butterworth Organic Nurseries in Ayrshire, who had spent the previous 15 years patiently resurrecting 120 Scottish heritage varieties with the help of the Millennium Forest For Scotland Trust. Some 30 of them were officially known as Scottish, because they were originally grown in this country.
They included Beauty Of Morays, Scotch Dumplings and Court Pendu Plats, Chivers Delight, Melrose White and the Coul Blush, the most northern from Ross-shire; the Lord Rosebery from Perth, which had died out in 1934, and the Oslin, believed to have been introduced to Scotland by medieval French Cistercian monks at either Newburgh or Arbroath. He told me Scotland's climate has two advantages: apples tend to keep longer, and their stronger acid content improves the flavour and bite. (I have to say I bought a Cambusnethan Pippin tree there and then, but it has fruited only once in nine years. Maybe I should have a walled garden, or move away from the west.)
Sadly, Butterworth gave up his orchard, but all is not lost. A national orchard gathering is to take place in Dunblane next month, and is being flagged as the "most significant event of its kind since the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society congress in 1885".
Organiser Mike Small, author of Scotland's Local Food Revolution, has identified a resurgence in fruit tree growing across the country, and hopes the gathering will unite a disparate movement. Andrew and Margaret Lear run a heritage apple tree nursery in Perthshire; John Hancox, of Glasgow, has been running Scottish Orchards to help develop a network of schools, groups and experts on apple growing (50 trees were planted in Eigg's community orchard last week, for example); and the Forth Valley Orchards Initiative has plotted an impressive number of orchards funded by Central Scotland Green Network Orchard Grant Scheme from 2010 to 2014. The gathering will see the unveiling of the first fully national survey of orchards for a century, which has already identified more than 1700 possible orchards.
Whether their fruits ever find their way into our supermarkets is impossible to predict, but the idea certainly has bite.
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