There are countless apple varieties in the world. When bees fly over an apple meadow with different varieties, they cross-pollinate the apple blossoms. This produces apple seeds in which the properties of the mother and father plants are completely remixed. Gerd Sundermeyer allowed these seeds to germinate and observed how they develop.
You won’t know if a seed will grow into a tree with attractive characteristics until you can taste the apples. To make this happen a little faster, a small piece of the stem of the new candidate is grafted onto an older tree. In a few years, the apples with the new characteristics will grow on this branch. If the new apple looks particularly good, can be stored well, and, above all, tastes better than the previous varieties, then it’s almost like winning the lottery – except that this involves many years of work.
Fräulein was such a stroke of luck: a real natural discovery.
Fräulein was discovered by fruit farmer Gerd Sunderland. For many years, he searched in the traditional way for an apple that combines all the best: balanced sweetness and acidity, a novel taste experience, and a crunchy bite.
In the Hildesheim Börde region, he let countless seeds sprout and grow, grafted the shoots, and tasted the harvest. He tested over 500 new varieties. Then one day he discovered the one crunchy crispy bite that didn’t exist yet. Fräulein was born – a chance breeding, based on the principle of nature.
