Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds – Apple-Obsessed Author Fella

October 29, 2026 / 0 Comments

Apple Review: Grimes Golden

I think it’s important in life to recognize that sometimes things just don’t go your way. They just don’t line up with your expectations — or, maybe, with what has been described to you as expectations. Sometimes we have bad information. Sometimes we have good information but just a bad situation. Chaos is ever at the margins of our daily existence. Entropy lurks in the wings, waiting to nibble and chew the struts and joists of our lives.

Or, rather, as the saying goes:

Shit happens.

(And no, I’m not talking about the elections on Tuesday.)

(Or, uhh, at least, I hope I’m not talking about the elections on Tuesday.)

(Also, go vote. Did you vote? Why haven’t you voted? Go vote! And don’t vote for these clownshow fascists. C’mon. Be better. We need you to do the right thing. The apples need you to do the right thing. And that’s real. Apples need a healthy environment to keep existing. To keep being delicious. So vote and vote well. For the apples and the eaters-of-apples.)

(Okay, back to APPLE TALK.)

I say all this because sometimes you watch expectations drive 100MPH into the brick wall of reality.

Specifically: the Grimes Golden apple.

The Grimes Golden has always been described to me as a fairly tasty apple. Have I had one before? Maybe? But I don’t remember it and don’t have much of a record of it. It’s certainly a pretty apple. Less gold and more the green of a Sour Patch kid dipped in a radioactive pond. If it were a crayon, it’d be Mister Burns Brings You Love. So, I had high hopes. Worse, I had high expectations.

To which I say:

Grimes Golden, you nasty.

Now, again, I’m sure this applies to the specific apple I ate, and not all Grimes Goldenseses, but I’m not here to review all of them, I’m here to review the one I just ate. And the one I ate, in the words of my son’s generation, was buns.

Here’s the thing: the Grimes Golden is, by some reports, one of the parents of Golden Delicious. And, by those same reports, the Golden Delicious is a more respectable version of its parent (I guess we should all be so lucky) in that many of its more complicated flavors were shaved off, filed down, painted over. Grimes Golden has been said to have flavors of various spices and peppercorns and brown sugar and citrus and all that. A funkier Golden Delicious. And that funk is probably one of its selling points as an heirloom varietal — big agriculture was happy to be rid of such complexity and dull down apples for a more common palate, but smaller agriculture is (thankfully) happier to lean into the more unique fingerprint of each fruit. So that means we can access more interesting, well, flavor journeys.

Well, my flavor journey with this apple was:

“Oh, this is juicy.”

“Hey, this is tart, I like it.”

“Hey, something is happening in my mouth.”

“Oh noooo I don’t like this as much now.”

“What is happening to my tongue?”

“Am I licking the wall in a house belonging to a chain smoker?”

“Is that Worcestershire sauce?”

“This is some Willy Wonka shit.”

“I feel like I’m drinking apple juice through a dirty sock.”

“And now the skin lingers.”

“The skin is in my mouth.”

“The skin won’t leave my mouth.”

“Please help.”

It was a whole journey. Ashy to vinegary to sweet but in a strange way — it was like, hey here’s tamarind mixed with gym shorts! That’s a flavor you wanted, right? No? Too bad! Now chew the skin! Chew the skin forever!

The best part of that journey was the start. Because it got weird fast.

At least it was nicely crisp and juicy.

So again, Grimes Golden, I say to you:

You nasty.

(p.s. Black River Orchard is still $2.99 at all your favorite e-book platforms — no idea how long that lasts, but it’s there now, so ta-da, huzzah, hooray)

Final score: I admire the weirdness of it, and those initial seconds, and that’s gonna get this apple a 3.3 out of 10, but I am quite certain in future years I will eat one with a markedly better score

Grimes Golden: nasty little nuclear baby

2026 reviews so far:

2025 reviews:

Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Opalescent, Orleans Reinette, Black Gilliflower, Red Delicious Double Feature, Jonathan, Ruby Mac, Crimson Topaz, Esopus Spitzenburg, Mutsu, Hunnyz, Winesap, Stayman Winesap, Winter Banana, Ribston Pippin, Rhode Island Greening, Roxbury Russet, Opal, Cosmic Crisp, Black Oxford, Ananas Reinette, Sugarbee, Granny Smith, LucyGlo/LucyRose, Ludacrisp, D’arcy Spice, Lemonade, Wild Twist

October 28, 2026 / 0 Comments

Three Bucks For Bad Apples

I do not know why Black River Orchard is a mere three bucks at your chosen ebookmonger platform (which does include Kobo and Bookshop-dot-org btw), but it is, so if you really wanna get freaky-freaky and smash up both APPLE SEASON and SPOOKY SEASON, well, I think I might just have the book for you.

Small-town suburban folk cult folk horror all surrounding the introduction of a new (aka ancient) evil apple variety? I mean, hey, I had to monetize all this weird apple knowledge somehow.

It’s definitely one of my favorite things I’ve written. Maybe the most favoritest thing I’ve written. I just am really glad I pulled it off — I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to pull it off, honestly. It was a hard book to get my hands around but I think? Maybe?? It worked out??? Who knows.

That’s your call, not mine.

And at least you can make the call now for like, three bucks.

Not even three bucks. $2.99. Can’t buy anything for that price anymore. I think three bucks even costs more than three bucks.

If you’ve read it, then maybe tell a friend to go grab it.

And then maybe leave a review somewhere!

AND THEN MAYBE LEAVE ME A SECRET CACHE OF APPLES SOMEWHERE, APPLES TO APPEASE ME AND MY DARK APPETITES

OR SHOULD I SAY

APPLETITES

WHICH ADMITTEDLY I FIRST MISTYPED AS APPLETITS

WHICH IS VERY DIFFERENT

I need to stop writing this post now, it’s all gone awry

Check out the book! Thanks! Bye!

October 27, 2026 / 1 Comment

Apple Review: Franc Rambour

There are many quality apple websites you can go to to read about apples and orchards — Orange Pippin is pretty good and you can search up orchards there. Obviously I’m a huge fan of Adam’s Apples, a blog dedicated to a much smarter person than I am eating and talking about heirloom apples. There’s also Pomiferous! Lot of great apple info to be gleaned at that site.

Today’s apple is the Franc Rambour, sometimes called the Rambour Franc, and if you’re me, you might call him FRANK RAMBO. I was over at Pomiferous looking up info about said apple, and under the header “cultivation,” it said the following:

Vigorous. Spur bearer. Precocious.

And I’m pretty sure that’s just erotica for botanical apple nerds.

That’s just shit you whisper into your Apple Husband’s* ear to get the party started, you know? Bring the apple sapling branch down on their backside with each of your naughty apple words, Pomiferous!

I guess the Rambour is a designation of an apple originating in an area of France called the Rambures? And now I am left to wonder the impact of terroir — as in, the way the environment affects the production of a fruit or a vegetable, imprinting upon it its unique characteristics — on apple trees. If these apples are named as such because of the region in which they are grown, is it truly the same apple if we grow it in, say, Vermont? Or Scotland? Or Canada? Or even in France, outside the region of their origin? Certainly we think that way about some grapes, or cheeses, and the like. Apples don’t seem to have the same designation.

Do the apples change when grown elsewhere? It stands to figure they would — though of course how an apple is grown isn’t the same, really. It’s not from seed. Apples are clones, generally, having been grafted.

Cider seems to be subject to some terroir, though there that’s also due to the unique microflora in a region that affect the fermentation — not necessarily due to the apples. So, that’s the question.

Is the FRANK RAMBO I ate really even the same apple, even though it’s a clone? Or is the way an apple is grown more, mm, let’s say protective of its characteristics regardless of the soil and air and water that help to grow in a specific region?

I don’t know! I am merely an amateur appleologist.

But if you know things, you should tell me!

WHATEVER. Onto the apple.

This apple, I yoinked from Scott Farm in Vermont.

I got it pretty late in its theoretical season, so I suspect that has affected the apple — some apples are keepers that improve over time in storage, but usually that’s a later-season apple, and early-season apples tend to be quite temporary before the whole thing goes off.

As such, the apple I ate was not the crisp, breaking apple oft-described — rather, it was softer than that. Not mealy! Not at all. Not sandy or mushy. But it was an easy chew, and inordinately juicy, as if the skin of the thing was simply an apple-shaped bag by which to contain its deliquescing apple ooze.

The flavor was I think best described as “refreshing” — the flavor wasn’t big, wasn’t particularly pronounced, and leaned toward tart and floral way more than sweet. And even the tartness wasn’t off the charts, and the florality was fairly subdued, leading to a pleasant but probably somewhat forgettable apple? Most descriptions also suggest its a subacid (aka sweeter) apple, and this just wasn’t that. Possibly another side effect of eating it so late in its season, though I think usually they tend to grow sweeter as they break down rather than less so?

(Again: not an expert. Merely an amateur Apple Boy.)

Another year — eaten earlier in that year — might offer a better, nicer bite.

ALAS.

Onward, to more apples.

Final score: I think a 5.5 outta 10 is fair for this apple, though I expect in another year, that score would jump a bit

Franc Rambour: Like drinking the memory of apple juice

* (or Apple Wife’s or Apple Partner’s, and only now am I realizing this is definitely a new version of Wicker I’m pretty into, I can’t wait for the Sexy Apple Tree version of Alexander Skarsgard)

2026 reviews so far:

2025 reviews:

October 26, 2026 / 2 Comments

Apple Review: Glockenapfel

Sometimes, looking back over my “apple review notes” is a weird treat. In this case, I found a note that said GLOCKENAPFEL: IT GLISTENS!!! and it was also underlined. So, anyway, I guess that’s the tagline for this apple?

I got this one from Scott Farm in Vermont — and here is where I dutifully remind you that you can get a box of heirloom apples shipped to you directly. It ain’t cheap, but the apples are weird, well-packed, and of high-quality.

(They are hashtag NotASponsor of terribleminds. I am just a fan.)

Anyway! The Glockenapfel.

It is also called the Pomme Cloche, and both terms mean bell apple, or bell-shaped apple. Because, I guess, it’s shaped like a bell? Mine was shaped like an apple. I want my money back.

It’s an apple whose origins are quite old — 500+ years. And it’s Swiss! Which means once every hour, a little cuckoo pops out of it with a beak made from a single apple seed, and it says APFEL! APFEL! before pecking the apple seed into your eye. Probably. I might’ve been hallucinating.

My understanding is this is predominantly for cooking, not for eating, and is in fact the apple chosen to make apple strudel. Which is delightful, except for the part I now want apple strudel. And then I looked up strudel, because I thought I knew what strudel was, and I did not? How did I not know what strudel was? It’s just little pies? Why did I think it looked like funnel cake? And now I also want funnel cake?? I’m very stupid. I should go eat a pickle and reset my entire palate.

Regardless.

The Glockenapfel.

In my notes, I also wrote, also underlined, LEMON KARATE!!

Which is a very good band name, a very good candy name, and actually a very good name for a lot of things. A cat? A child belonging to Gwyneth Paltrow? A weed strain? A town in upstate Pennsylvania? Yes to all of that.

It is, however, also a good description of what happened when I ate this apple.

It basically immediately punched my mouth with an intense lemon, well, karate kick. It was just like KIYAAA and I was like OH FUCK and then a really delightful pink lemonade berry vibe settled in after. And not a super sweet lemonade, either, but a good tart lemonade.

The other thing was, it was ludicrously juicy. And that was something of an issue because the juice flooded my maw, then the tartness electroshocked my saliva production, which kind of led me to drool a little bit. Which is not the ideal situation when you’re eating an apple. You look like a drugged-out donkey who got into the yard mushrooms. Not a great vibe.

Texture was firm and hard breaking, with a real crunch.

I liked it.

You go, Glockenapfel.

Final score: For the novelty of it, I’m gonna give it a nice 6.9 outta 10

Glockenapfel: IT GLISTENS!! LEMON KARATE!!!

2026 reviews so far:

2025 reviews:

October 25, 2026 / 1 Comment

The Greatest Apple I’ve Ever eaten (Reine Des Reinettes Re-Review)

Today, I ate the best apple I’ve ever eaten.

That photo is not that apple. It is, as Tenacious D says, just a tribute.

That photo is, however, of the Reine des Reinettes I ate last year. You can read my review of that apple — and a weird rumination on sadness and books and nostalgia — right here.

The apple I ate today was a Reine des Reinettes — just a new one. Same orchard. Just one year later.

And it was an apple that, on paper, should not have been good.

This apple, you see, had been on a journey.

As you may know, I finished up my Calamities book tour with its final week, and it was wonderful. I saw some of my besties — Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne — and got to hang at some excellent bookstores like Phoenix Books in Burlington VT, the mighty Gibsons in Concord NH, Oblong in Rhinebeck, and even Bakka Phoenix from Toronto. (Signed copies left at each, btw. So go to them and grabby-grabby.)

It was a great capstone week. I met so many great readers. You readers are how I get to do this weird thing I do, and I try very hard to never forget that.

While on this last leg of the tour, I was of course hunting apples like a good little apple pig. I dragged Delilah to Scott Farm in Vermont on day one, and then at every subsequent event people brought me more (!!) apples. Readers and bookstore folk alike. In fact, it was in Burlington, at Phoenix, where they presented me with more apples from Scott Farm.

One of those apples was a Reine des Reinettes — King of the Pippins! Or Queen of the Pippins! Or Golden Winter Pearmain! Lotta names for that one.

I did not eat it then.

I in fact, took it with me. First, to Canada. Then, to the Hudson Valley. Then, it came home with me, to Pennsylvania — days ago! And only then did I refrigerate it. The rest of the time, it was in my hotel room, or in Kevin’s house, or in my car. It did not get a proper cold storage treatment. It went on quite a journey and was not treated like royalty whilst traveling so.

So, today, I was making applesauce.

And I pulled it out of my apple drawer.

(I actually have an entire apple refrigerator but I don’t like it and so I mostly just use one of our crisper drawers.)

And I thought, sure, it’ll go fine in the applesauce.

I cut it up.

And I took a bite.

Ah!

AHH.

Whoa.

Whoa.

It was an absolute firework finale of flavor. It was mega sweet, it was ultra tart, there was a touch of lavender, of almond extract, of citrus, of anise, pear and pineapple — but no textural issues, none of the vampiric suck of high tannins. Just big juice and big flavor.

I stood there, alone in my kitchen but for the dog — Cooper, our new pup — slumbering literally on top of my feet as I cut up apples. I just took slice after slice and ate it. Slowly and methodically. Not being wilful about what I was tasting, but being mindful — and not really even choosing mindfulness so much as being drawn into it by the wonders of this apple.

None of it went into the sauce.

All of it went into my face.

Such a simple moment, with uncomplicated context, and no special conditions occurring but for the snoozing dog and the quiet house.

And, for that moment, the best apple I ever ate.

An apple whose flavor high I will forever chase.

And! A good example of why it’s good to try apples year after year, and even from orchard to orchard. Last year’s apple got an 8 out of 10.

If I were to be so crass as to assign this sublime experience a numerical value —

It’d be a solid 10 / 10.

The greatest, most flavorful apple I ever did done eat.

What’s the best apple you’ve ever eaten?

October 24, 2026 / 0 Comments

Apple Review: Jonagold (Plus Some Bonus Honeycrisp Slander)

I do so love it when apples enter the discourse. Apples should be in our discourse every day! At least, autumnally. Because apples are good! They’re non-native but somehow quintessentially American feeling, tied into the story of local agriculture versus big agriculture, connected to indigenous orchards punished by colonizers, wound up with Johnny Appleseed, with Prohibition, with the propaganda that pushed apple out of the sinner’s circle of cider production and into As American as Apple Pie (even though apple pie isn’t even American). It’s really why I wrote Black River Orchard, in part — there’s just so much to talk about, and some of it is really, really fucked up.

Anyway, so when you have a Senate candidate like Dr. Abdul El-Sayed step onto the campaign trail and talk about (gasp) apples, you know I’m there.

In the video — which you should watch, because he’s a great speaker, honestly — he talks about liking Honeycrisp, but also how the Honeycrisp is maybe a kind of basic-ass apple. And so he and a farmer talk up a different apple, instead:

The Jonagold.

And today, the day after he posts that talk, I go to my orchard and whaaaaat do I behold? A bin of Jonagold apples.

IT WAS AS IF APPLE JESUS HIMSELF HAND-DELIVERED THEM. A miracle! Apple Jesus said, “And lo, my child, the apple you seek is the apple before you. I am the tree and I am the pippin. I am the way.” Then a worm burst out of him. The Holy Worm.

Anyway, I plucked a batch from the bin.

(These, sadly, were nestled amongst very few bins of apples. At a time when the apple bins should be overflowing, the local orchards here have little to show, given an early heat wave and a late frost this past spring that fucked up all the stonefruits and the apple harvest. Farmers are already under the boot and this certainly didn’t help them.)

Whatever the case, with this apple entering political discourse, it seems a good time to give it some munchings and crunchings, Gurgi-style.

The Jonagold: a cross between the Golden Delicious and the Jonathan apple. El-Sayed points out, this is a terrible name, and clearly the name should’ve been a Golden Jonathan. He is objectively correct on this point and I’ll brook no discussion on the subject.

I really like a Golden Delicious apple, and last year, I ate a Jonathan apple that bordered on the sublime (review here).

So, one would expect the Jonagold to be a nearly perfect apple experience.

It —

Was not?

To be upfront, it was good. Close to great! The apple I ate, from Manoff Orchard, was tasty as all get-out. It was a hair too sweet for me — that sadomasochistic electrocution kick of tartness was not present. And — to also refer to the El-Sayed video — the chew lasted just a smidge longer than the flavor, which is not the ideal Apple-Eating Situation.

It was also a weird apple because it defied exactly what I just said to you, depending on where you bit into the apple.

To clarify:

Different parts of the apple tasted different.

This is new to me.

I’ve never had this before.

The apple at the top — the broad-shouldered part of the apple — was very sweet, not very tart.

But halfway down?

The bottom of the apple?

(Technically referred to as the “calyx,” which is Latin for “apple butthole.”)

That had a tartness to match the sweetness.

Well, what the fuck was that? Is that a thing? I do not recall that ever happening to me before. That’s some Willy Wonka Everlasting Gobstopper shit. An apple that changes flavor depending on where you take your bite? That’s amazing. It’s also bullshit. What the crap.

So, the bottom half of the apple would definitely garner a higher rating then… the upper half? The apple’s ass? Great. The apple’s beefy shoulders? Merely good.

And all of this does little to resolve El-Sayed positioning the Jonagold versus the Honeycrisp — I’ve long shat upon the Honeycrisp, but truth is, it’s generally a perfectly good apple. Is the Jonagold better?

Maybe! Better is so deeply subjective, of course. I maybe liked it more. Does that mean it’s objectively better? No, of course not. A lot of people will definitely prefer the Honeycrisp. Then again, some people also like the TV show, Yellowstone. Some people listen to the band Oasis, if you’ll believe it.

Some people are full of beans. Can’t be helped.

Beyond that, what else is there to say? The Jonagold is a perfectly cromulent apple. Not particularly complex, except for the weird “flavor-by-hit-location” thing going on. It’s middle-of-the-road in terms of crunch. It was deliciously juicy. The sweetness could be described as “honeyed,” but that might be giving it a little extra-credit. It’s nice! It’s fine! It’s an apple whose parents are infinitely more accomplished and interesting — like being the child of Axl Rose and Moira Rose and you’re just, like, Gordon Rose, and you became an accountant or something who plays guitar and sings on weekends at a local bar. You’re fine! You do fine. But nobody’s really going to remember you.

Final score: I’d give the top half a 7.0, the butt half a 7.4, so I’m just gonna call this a 7.2 / 10 and take a nap

Jonagold: If you can’t hang out with one of its parents, go for it

2026 reviews so far:

2025 reviews: