A declaration first: we do not sell apples. Fresh fruit needs cold-chain handling that the dry fruit trade does not have, and a box of apples sent by courier arrives bruised. What follows is a buyer's guide to the fruit Kashmir is best known for, written because the questions reach us anyway — and because a reader who understands the valley's orchards understands why its almonds and walnuts cost what they do.
Where they grow
Jammu and Kashmir produces around seven in ten of India's apples — over two million tonnes in a good year — and almost all of that comes from the Kashmir valley. The orchards run the length of it: Sopore and Baramulla in the north, Shopian, Pulwama and Kulgam in the south, Anantnag at the valley's head. Sopore calls itself the apple town, and its fruit mandi is the valley's largest, loading trucks for the plains from August to November.
Apple has been displacing everything else for a generation. Almond orchards in Pulwama and Budgam have been grubbed up for apple because an apple tree flowers later and misses the spring frost, and because apple pays better per tree. Whatever else that has done, it means the valley's apple crop is still growing.
The varieties
The Delicious family. Red Delicious and its sports — Royal Delicious, Starking, and spur types — are the bulk of the crop: the deep red, five-knobbed apple that most of India thinks of as a Kashmiri apple. Golden Delicious is the yellow one. They are sweet, mild, crisp when fresh and mealy when old, and they are graded by size and colour into the boxes you see in the mandi.
Ambri. The valley's own apple — the one variety native to Kashmir, pale red streaked over yellow-green, firm, aromatic and famous for keeping through the winter in an ordinary cold room. It ripens late, in October and November. It has been almost entirely displaced by Delicious because it is a slow and shy bearer, and it is now rare enough that finding a box is worth the hunt; research stations in the valley have been working to bring it back.
Maharaji. A tart, firm, late apple that keeps for months and was the valley's cooking and winter apple. Like Ambri it is becoming hard to find.
The new high-density orchards. Over the last decade growers have planted imported rootstock and varieties — Gala and spur-type Delicious among them — in dense rows that crop earlier in the year and earlier in the tree's life. They are the apples reaching the market in August, before the traditional crop.
The season
Early varieties and the high-density orchards pick in August. The main Delicious crop is September and October. Ambri and Maharaji come last, in late October and November. Controlled-atmosphere stores in the valley now hold apples through the winter, so a Kashmiri apple in March is not unusual, but it has been stored; a Kashmiri apple in June almost certainly has not, whatever the label says.
How they reach you
Nearly all of it goes by road over the Jammu–Srinagar highway to Delhi's Azadpur mandi and onward, in cartons graded A, B and C by size and colour. Highway closures in autumn rain and winter snow are what send the price up in a given week, more than anything happening in the orchards. A grower sells to a commission agent at the mandi; by the time the apple reaches a city fruit stall it has usually changed hands three times.
What to check before paying
Firmness and weight. A fresh Delicious is hard and heavy for its size. Softness or a hollow feel means it has been out of the cold for a while.
The stem. A green, pliable stem is this season's; a dry, dark stub has been stored.
Wax. Imported apples are almost always waxed; much Indian fruit now is too. Ask, or rub the skin: wax comes off on a cloth.
Variety, not just origin. "Kashmiri apple" covers a sweet Delicious and a tart Maharaji. Ask which, and buy Ambri or Maharaji if you want the apple the valley grew before the trade standardised it.
What we can send from the same orchards
The apple districts are the almond districts. If you came here for apples, the one thing from those orchards we can put in a courier parcel is the Kashmiri almond — small, soft-shelled, thin-skinned, and from Pulwama. Everything else we sell from the valley is on one page, with the district named on each product; for the rest of the valley's produce and when it ripens, see the fruits of Kashmir.
