Green Bazaar Icon · Giant Heirloom Apple

Aport Apple

Photo: Olga Zavyalova / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

A single Aport apple can weigh over 800 grams — nearly two pounds — and the variety only grew that large after a Russian settler grafted imported seeds onto wild local apple trees in the 1860s.

Sold heaped in wooden crates at Almaty's Green Bazaar every autumn, Aport apples are deep red, intensely fragrant, and prized for holding their flavor after months in storage. Vendors sell them by the kilo to eat fresh, and market stalls press them into juice or dry the slices into a chewy snack.

Why it's made this way: Russian settler Yegor Redko planted Aport seeds on the banks of the Malaya Almatinka River in 1865 and crossed them with wild apples native to the Trans-Ili Alatau foothills; the fruit grew so large it won prizes at international horticultural exhibitions, including Paris in 1900. Almaty's own name translates roughly as 'full of apples' in Kazakh.