Green Bazaar Icon · Giant Heirloom Apple

Aport Apple

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

A single Aport apple can weigh 500 grams or more, and the region's wild apple, Malus sieversii, is now recognized as the main ancestor of the domestic apple.

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 brought Aport saplings from European Russia and grafted them onto wild apple trees in the foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau in 1865, and the fruit grew so large it won prizes at international exhibitions. Almaty's own name translates roughly as 'place of apples' in Kazakh.