Azernews.Az

Autumn is an apple season in the Land of Fire, and you can try almost all varieties here.

The Land of Fire, with its variegated nature including almost all climatic zones, can be called an apple country with 300 varieties of apples. Yellow, green, red, purple and pink - the color palette of growing apples are very rich and colorful.

This fruit is extremely rich in terms of antioxidants, flavonoids and dietary fibre. The phytonutrients and antioxidants in apples may help reduce the risk of developing cancer, hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. Also, apples contain almost no fat, sodium or cholesterol.

The queen of all apples in Azerbaijan is undoubtedly “Gizilahmadi”. If you ask the Azerbaijanis to call their favorite apple, the first thing that will come to their minds would be, for sure, Gizilahmadi.

Generated locally, Gizilahmadi is mostly grown up in Ismailli, Sheki, Guba and Zagatala regions. From the 1,000 hectares of fruits field located in Ismailli region, 70 hectares constitute Gizilahmadi apple.

The northern region of Guba can rightly be considered as a motherland of Azerbaijani apples. The entire region is full of apple orchards. Smell of juicy and aromatic apple trees have spread into every stone and every house of this beautiful northern region. It seems like you are in the heaven of apples.

Guba’s most famous kind of apple is the “White Apple” (Ag alma). One cannot satisfy his/her hunger trying this yellow, fragrant and red cheeked fruit. Azerbaijanis are so proud of this kind of apple that they wrote a song for it called “Guba’s White Apple”. And it is not surprisingly when you think that one-third of them are involved in the apple harvesting in some capacity.

Azerbaijan is also famous for its “Paradise apples” (Jannat almasi). This small and cute sort of apples looks like golden crab apples but taste far sweeter.

Autumn is also the best time to prepare apple jam and apple compote to enjoy the sweet taste and healthy nutrients of these fruits at home year-round.