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Newtown Pippin apples are an old American heirloom that can keep for more than a year in a cool basement. They’re hard and bland when you pick them, then mellow over the winter into a sweet-tart apple for pie, cider, and fresh eating long after the rest are gone.
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I have this dream of one day living a year without a grocery store, where we live on what we grow. It’s not something you can do at the drop of a hat, but we’ve been planting orchards for year-round fruit, perennial vegetables, hardy nut trees, and other food crops on our land here in Vermont for more than a decade.
Storage apples are a big part of that plan, and Newtown Pippin is the one we count on. Ours keep in the basement from late October well into the next year, with nothing fancier than newspaper and cardboard boxes.
It’s also an apple with a long history. George Washington grafted it, Thomas Jefferson planted it at Monticello, and Virginia growers shipped it to England. You’ll see it spelled Newton Pippin too, and it’s the same apple.
If you’re planning a storage orchard, my list of heirloom apples has more than a hundred to compare. For the other end of the season, our Yellow Transparent tree grows right next to our Newtown Pippin and ripens in July.
Notes from My Homestead
Our Newtown Pippin tree came with the land, planted by the people who lived here before us, and it gives us literally hundreds of pounds of apples. They still aren’t quite ripe in late October, so we pick them before the first snow and pack them into the basement. They taste more or less like Styrofoam until January, and then they come into their own.
The first winter, I figured they’d last until Christmas. They were still crisp at Christmas, so we made a pie and left the rest to see what would happen. By the next Christmas, 14 months after picking, they were finally breaking down, but they still made a second pie. I’ve even eaten one of last year’s apples while picking this year’s crop.
The History of Newtown Pippin Apples
Newtown Pippin comes from the village of Newtown on Long Island, now Elmhurst in Queens. It started as a seedling on Gershom Moore’s estate in the early 1700s, and by 1759 it was a well-known apple.
It traveled fast. Benjamin Franklin got a package of Newtown Pippins from the 1758 crop while he was living in London, and a few years later he wrote home asking for young trees. George Washington noted grafting ten of them in his diary in 1763.
Thomas Jefferson started planting them in 1769, and Monticello says he grew up to fifty trees in his South Orchard. Writing to James Madison from France in 1785, he said the French had no apple to compare with it.
In Virginia it went by Albemarle Pippin, and it supported a large export trade to England from Jefferson’s home county. There are green and yellow strains, and nobody’s sure which one came first.
Where to Buy Newtown Pippin Trees
A few nurseries still carry it, sometimes under the Newton spelling. Grow Organic sells Yellow Newton Pippin trees bare root.
Most mail-order nurseries only ship bare-root trees in early spring, so order over the winter. If you just want the apples, they turn up now and then at farmers’ markets and heirloom orchards in the fall. If you find some, buy extra and try storing them yourself.
What Do Newtown Pippin Apples Taste Like?
Right off the tree, not much. They’re hard and green, and Orange Pippin suggests storing them a month or two before you eat them. I give them at least three months, and ours don’t really come into their own until January.
In storage, the skin turns from green to yellow, and the flavor mellows and improves. The USDA’s apple collection describes the flesh as firm, crisp, and tender, and Beach put their eating season at February through May.
By late winter they’re crisp, juicy, and sweet-tart, and a home-grown apple is a welcome treat with snow still on the ground.
Ways to Use Newtown Pippins
Pie is the big one for us. Newtown Pippin is the apple we use for pie most often, because the tree is so prolific, and even a year in storage doesn’t stop them from baking up into a good pie. I peel them with an apple peeler corer, which makes quick work of a pie’s worth of apples.
My list of pie apples has more good bakers, and for a change from the usual pie, try a Norwegian apple pie. If you’d rather put pie in jars, here’s how to can apple pie filling.
They’re good in cider too, and Cummins Nursery classes them as a sharp cider apple. That one tree gives us around 20 gallons of cider a year from our cider press, and most years a lot of it becomes canned apple cider for mulled cider in the winter. In 2026, we boiled much of it down into cider syrup on our maple syrup evaporator.
Fresh cider also makes a good hard cider or apple wine, and Newtown Pippins work pressed on their own or blended with sweeter apples.
They take a long time to cook down, which makes them better for a chunky apple jam than a smooth sauce. They make a tangy apple butter too, if you’re patient.
How We Store Newtown Pippins for Over a Year
We don’t have a root cellar. Our land has a high water table, so we use the back corner of the basement instead. It stays cool all year, but it’s well above the near-freezing temperature most storage guides recommend.
Pick them as late as you can, and only store the apples with no bruises or dings. Anything bruised goes into the cider press instead. Wrap each one in a sheet of newspaper and set them in shallow boxes in a single layer, so one bad apple can’t spoil its neighbors.
Unwrap a few now and then to see how they’re doing. Our first year, we used plain cardboard boxes, and later I built an apple storage rack with ten drawers that holds about 200 pounds of apples.
By late March they’ve been in storage for six months, and they’re still crisp and delicious. The skin color has deepened, and they’ve mellowed a bit.
After about eight months they start to wrinkle a little, probably because our basement is on the dry side, but they don’t spoil. At 14 months they were finally starting to break down, and they still baked into a good pie.
Ashmead’s Kernel, Honeycrisp, and Northern Spy have all kept eight months or more for us the same way. Root Cellaring by Mike and Nancy Bubel is the book that changed how I think about storing food, and here’s more on keeping apples fresh for over a year.
Growing Newtown Pippin Apple Trees
Newtown Pippin is a vigorous tree, but it’s slow to start and doesn’t always crop every year. A 1908 account says old standard trees seldom bore before they were 10 or 12 years old, and the USDA notes it can bear heavy one year and light the next.
It likes a long, warm season. Orange Pippin says it needs a hot summer and fall to ripen well, and the horticulturist A.J. Downing wrote about its need for deep, warm, rich soil.
Even so, ours does fine here in Vermont. We pick in late October, just before the snow, and the apples finish ripening in storage.
Cummins Nursery lists it for zones 4 to 8. Purdue Extension rates it susceptible to scab and powdery mildew, moderately susceptible to fire blight, and resistant to cedar apple rust, though Cummins lists it as susceptible to rust. It’s also prone to bitter pit, according to the University of California.
It isn’t self-fertile, so plant a second apple nearby that blooms midseason. Stark Bro’s has listed Cortland and Sheep’s Nose as pollinators for it. With dozens of apple trees on our land, we’ve never had to think about it.
If you know someone with an old tree, grafting is another way to get one. A few cuttings of scion wood grafted onto rootstock give you the same apple.
Newtown Pippin Apple FAQs
A few quick answers about Newtown Pippins, starting with the spelling.
People use both spellings for the same apple. The name comes from Newtown on Long Island, so Newtown is the original, but some nurseries sell it as Newton Pippin. Virginians also call it Albemarle Pippin.
Several months in a cool place. We’ve kept ours 14 months wrapped in newspaper in the basement. Nurseries list three to six months, so ours is on the long end.
Very late. In the north, growers pick them in late October or early November, about three to four weeks after Red Delicious. They taste best after a few months in storage.
Yes. They’re the apple we use for pie most often, and we’ve made pie from apples we’d kept in storage for more than a year.
No. It needs another apple variety that blooms at the same time nearby, unless there are already apple trees in your neighborhood.
More Apple Varieties
A few more apples to consider for your orchard.
Did you find this Newtown Pippin guide helpful? Tell me in the 📝 comments below about the apples you keep through the winter!
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