Sunset is a popular Cox-style apple, widely recommended as an alternative to Cox's Orange Pippin as it is much easier to grow. The parentage is not known but it is almost certainly a seedling of Cox. Disease resistance is far better, and cropping is good.
The flavor can vary quite a bit, but even in an average year it will be reliably sweet, and in a good year it has some of the aromatic qualities of Cox's Orange Pippin.
Sunset ripens in mid-September.
Deliveries now finished
The main horticultural problem is that the apples tend to be quite small, but this is easily corrected by thinning the fruitlets thoroughly in May and early June.
Sunset can be grown reliably throughout much of the UK.
It is a neat and compact tree, and a good variety for growing in a patio container.
Introduced in 1918, unknown parentage but assumed to be a seedling of Cox's Orange Pippin.