Holstein was one of Rod McIver’s favorite apples, although it unfortunately suffered serious winter injury when it saw a -33F in Kalispell, Montana. Rod enjoyed this apple because he was a huge Cox Orange Pippin fan, yet hated how terribly Cox would grow in Montana. He would always call it horticultural malpractice whenever nurseries wouldn’t list all the terrible attributes that Cox had when grown in MT (check our description of it!). Anyways, he found Holstein to be much more forgiving than Cox when it comes to scab, shriveling up/cracking, etc., and yet still found that many of the great Cox flavors were present in Holstein. Holstein is not as disease resistant as Ellison’s Orange but Holstein has a much better flavor than Ellison’s Orange according to Rod. All we had in our notes for how Rod described Ellison’s Orange was that it was “weird” ;).

Holstein is not a cold climate apple and won’t survive much below -30F, but is worth growing for those wanting to try one of our mentor’s all time favorites. We only have 3 in stock for Spring 2025 stock and they are grafted onto semi-dwarf M7. Not good for the vast majority of Montana! Hardy to -30 to -35F.