It takes a long time to grow apple seeds into bearing trees and then to harvest and evaluate the resulting fruits. We've been doing that very consistently for 32 years, and we're being rewarded with exceptionally high-quality, unique, exciting apples!
We call our collection "Topper's Apples." The extended discussion of Vika below is meant to inform and entertain you. There are more than two dozen varieties in the collection. We've written about Topper's Apples and many other varieties, as listed on the apple index page.
You'll pick up the flavor of our apple world at Sponsel's Minnesota Harvest as you visit the varieties, because the writings are as diverse as the apples they describe. We invite you to click around and read them all.

Glossary of Apple Terms | Apple index page | Apple picking dates page

A number of varieties picked in August are red with green undercolor. Vika is fully colored, and that's what caught our eye first. It goes from a cherry red to almost black.

Vika is remarkably Viking-like in a number of traits, all the way from the growth habit of the tree (lanky, sparse-branching, and leaf shape just like Viking) to the color and taste of the fruit (even more prone to deep purple skin color than Viking with flavor virtually indistinguishable from Viking).

Most importantly, Vika has not shown a tendency to sunburn and bake in the hot August sun, which is a serious flaw of Viking. We'll keep an eye on this, because darkly colored apples absorb more sun than lighter colored apples.

Viking has the more attractive shape of the two, being taller than it is wide, with a handsome taper from shoulder to base. Vika is oblate, meaning the North Pole and the South Pole are closer to each other, and the Equator is a long way around.

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