Thunderbolt Apple (Spring 2027)

This is our first year growing Thunderbolt, so everything below comes from other people's work rather than our own observations here. We will update it once we have fruit and a few winters behind us.

Overview

Thunderbolt is a big, dark red winter apple that was effectively lost for decades before the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project tracked it back down in southwest Colorado. It is firm, sharp, and built for storage, and it is one of the more striking apples we have ever put in the ground.

Origin and History

Thunderbolt, also known as Hoover, was one of the apples that made Montezuma County, Colorado famous for fruit around the turn of the last century. It was a favorite of Jasper Hall, an early grower known locally as the Fruit Wizard of Montezuma County. The variety slipped out of commerce as old orchards were pulled and replanted to Red Delicious, and for years it existed mostly as a name in old records. Jude and Addie Schuenemeyer of MORP first ran across it in a magazine published in 1909 by a Denver writer named Lillian Hartman, and then spent years hunting for a living tree. They eventually found it in the remnant of an old orchard, grafted everything they could, and only confirmed it later when one of those trees matched another Thunderbolt they had collected north of Cortez.

Fruit and Uses

The fruit is large and nearly maroon, with white speckles and flecks of golden brown across the top. The flesh is firm and briskly acidic. This is not an apple to eat off the tree in September. Pick it after a good frost and put it away, because the flavor keeps improving in storage and it will hold most of the winter. That acid makes it useful well beyond fresh eating, so sauce, pies, canning and cider all work.

Growth Habit and Spacing

We are offering Thunderbolt on Bud 118 semi-dwarf rootstock, so plan on roughly 15 feet between trees, or up to 18 feet if you want more airflow and less pruning pressure down the road.

Pollination

Thunderbolt needs a pollenizer. It blooms mid to late, so pair it with another apple in that window. Northern Spy, Arkansas Black, Honeycrisp and Macoun all overlap, as do most of our crabapples.

Cold Hardiness

We are listing it at zone 4 for now, which is where the Colorado record puts it. We have no Montana winter data on it yet, so if you are in a cold pocket of the western valleys or anywhere east of the divide, give it a good site out of frost pooling until we know more.

About the photo: this isn’t Thunderbolt itself. Photos of Thunderbolt are either under copyright or simply unavailable, so we picked the open-source image that looks closest to the fruit. Photo by Marek Studzinski, via Unsplash, under the Unsplash License.