What would autumn mean, with all its crisp temperatures in the air and crisp crinkle of leaves on the ground, without the added crisp taste of apples in the mouth?

Sure, the season would not be fruitless – but it would be difficult to bear. I, for one, probably would go bananas.

This thought ripened in my brain recently after attending a “Gourmet Apple Tasting” event at an Oregon nursery. I sampled 35 varieties of apples as well as 11 kinds of pears.

I am no apple professional. In fact, I don’t even know why a wine expert is called a “sommelier” but an apple enthusiast is not called a “pommelier,” but I do know you don’t even have to be French to appreciate a fine apple (let alone a pineapple), and it’s not because they are as American as apple pie. (Besides, I’d say the best apple pie is German, but I don’t want to get into Dutch).

Suffice it to say I love apples. If you’ve never tried anything beyond a Delicious from the supermarket, you owe it to yourself to branch out a bit, or even a bite.

I was part of a small group at the tasting who joined a throng happily sampling the slivers of fruit on toothpicks, arranged near placards identifying the varieties. We compared notes. I developed a rating system in which favorites received increasing numbers of “m’s” to signify the overall yummy factor. My taste of a Hood River Galen rated an “mmm,” while the Honey Crisp – a cross of the Mancoun and Honeygold varieties – garnered an “mmMmmM.”

Other samples I also enjoyed for their names and descriptions. The Northern Spy, for example, is considered by the hosts of the tasting to be all encompassing as “large fruit, fine grained, rather firm, very tender, crisp and juicy. Tart and aromatic. Excellent all-purpose apple, except for drying and cider. Ripens in late October. A good keeper. Since the 1940s, it has been a standard for apple quality.”

I also liked the apple with the name Erwin Bauer because it was so … well, personable … or person-apple: “Discovered in Germany and introduced in 1928, lightly striped red over yellow fruit that is especially hard and crisp, with a hint of the flavor of Cox’s Orange Pippen, though with more acid.”

But variety is not the only place from which my enthusiasms for apples stem. As a fruit through history, the apple is ripe with lore and practical apple-cation:

Johnny Appleseed. Now, maybe I’m confusing parts of the tale with other heroes of American history, such as Andy Arborday, Brian Bunion or Cleopatra. But what other fruit has a tall tale at its core?

As the story goes, Johnny had humble beginnings. The ninth child of Pennsylvania farmers so poor they had to use their horse-drawn carriage as their house, the feeble addition of weight upon Johnny’s arrival literally upset the apple cart.

But as a boy he discovered a giant beanstalk. He climbed it, and in the clouds – lo and behold – he met an enormous cow. She found herself discontented because she had tried to jump over the moon and got stuck. But in gratitude to Johnny for leading her back down to safety, she gave him three magic seeds.

He planted them as instructed, and they sprang forth a magic orchard. Johnny grew up to be a brilliant horticulturalist, launched a successful agri-business consulting firm with a partner, Peter Pumpkinhead, and eventually garnered a legendary reputation in a life filled with travel, glamorous women, crime-fighting and fruitful adventure.

Adages. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” What does the American Medical Association (AKA the A.M.A.) have to say? Well, we don’t hear doctors shouting, “nay,” so they might as well say, “touche.”

Games. A not too rotten trick you just can’t do as well with other fruit involves a needle. After running little strands of black thread through a seed and dropping it in your friend’s apple juice, you can holler, “Look out! There’s a spider in your cider!”

And who ever heard of “Bobbing for Prunes?”

Names. The appeal, or a-peel, of the name of this fruit abounds. The Beatles did not record at Lemon Studios, the user-friendly brand of computer is not named after a strain of grapes, and the popular iced tea beverage brand is not known as “Snorange.”

In short, to imagine this world – let alone this time of year – without at least an occasional apple … well, that is a thought with which I would just as soon not grapple.

In waxing philosophic about one of the so-called apples of his eye, Brad Bolchunos does not mean to imply that his zeal for virtually all other kinds of fruits and vegetables has in any way turned sour. “It was just something I could sink my teeth into,” he explains, and to all others he extends an olive branch.