Rubigold Apples
A Tasmanian success story
Rubigolds are a relatively new variety of apple developed in Tassie’s Huon Valley by the Griggs family, sixth generation orchardists.
The name “Rubigold” comes from the colour of the apple’s skin and its golden flesh. The Rubigold variety was discovered by chance in one of the Griggs’ orchards back in 1997. They found one limb on one tree where every apple was completely red while all the other fruit on the tree was pale green. They took some wood from the tree and grafted it to see what would happen. The next season they had more beautiful, perfectly formed, highly coloured red apples with the same crisp texture and beautiful taste. So every year they grew some more and grafted some more and now they have a commercial orchard of this wonderful new variety.
Currently Rubigolds are only grown in the Huon Valley, making this variety uniquely 100% Tasmanian owned and grown.
Rubigolds are a versatile apple, delicious to eat as is but also excellent for cooking or juicing as they require little or no added sugar due to their natural sweetness. When cut they don’t discolour as quickly as other varieties so they are perfect for fruit salad or cheese platters.
Rubigolds are packed with the antioxidant quercetin. Their skin contains a very high amount of red skin pigmentation compared to other varieties – you can see this sometimes when you bit into a ripe Rubigold and you get a leeching of excess red pigmentation from the skin onto the flesh of the apple. This is not a defect, it’s a super dose of quercetin.
