elysium wines

If so… congratulations on your knowledge of the east coast’s largest native fruit. And if not… well, lets get educated!

Planchonella australis  (who’s common names include Black Apple, Black Plum and Yellow Buttonwood)  is a medium to tall rainforest tree of the family Sapotaceae, native to Queensland and New South Wales, Australia. It’s fruits are purplish-black and up to 50mm long, with 2 – 5 large seeds resembling custard apple seeds (it is also a distant relative of that fruit).

'Native Apple' (watercolour) by Marrianne Campbell, 1874

Being a rainforest tree that fruits mostly on the edge of the canopy, necessitates climbing the tree to harvest the fruit – so Jim’s arborist skills (and equipment) come in handy. Tasting somewhat like a dry-textured fig, the flesh changes from creamy to deep purple when overripe.

This beautiful illustration showing the fruit and leaves of the species is by little-known Australian artist Marrianne Campbell, who lived in the 1800s and had a passion for painting our native flora and butterflies (see the full collection here).

So what are we doing with it? The wine is different from others that we’ve made in the past, much richer and a deep red-purple colour – shaping up to be perhaps a “big red” or even a unique dessert wine. Also, as we had to de-seed the fruit we were able to supply them to other growers for growing these uncommon trees. Don’t hold your breath though, they take up to 10 years to fruit! An interesting theory I have heard is that now extinct tree-climbing ‘megafauna’ ate this relatively large fruit (and thereby dispersed the seeds) – and we have noticed the lack of ‘native nibbles’ on the black apples compared to other fruits.