All apples are not alike, as any apple-phile will tell you, and the deeper you fall under the spell of heirloom apple varieties, which number in the hundreds, the more you will hunger to try them.

Apple lore says that the farmer who found it named it after his wife, Pauline. And further down, the word “heirloom,” written in cursive, regally unspools across a sign. It signals the Milton ...