I have been eating my Cot-N-Candy Apriums for the past 4-5 days and while I find them good to me they are short of excellent. On a 1 - 10 scale probably a 6 or 7 if you catch them at the right time.
Shelf life is very short and you must pick and eat them promptly or quality is lower. Pick them too early like a hard peach they are not good. Pick them too late they get soft and mushy like an overripe cherry. Their texture is 75% apricot and 25% plum. Taste more similar to apricot with some definite plum influences. They are fairly sweet but lack the rich flavor of good homegrown apricots. Top tier pluots like Favor Grenade are much better tasting in my opinion.
Is the tree worth having? For me probably not as I have limited space and I have already a few branches grafted it onto my Tropic Gold Apricot tree so I will likely remove the CNC Aprium after if finishes fruiting. I will still have some fruit in later years from the (3) Cot-N-Candy grafts I did. Another good but overhyped new fruit cultivar by the folks at Dave Wilson Nursery.
Here are a few photos.
Johnny
Thank you for the confirmation. It's not just the locations I have sampled it at, but yours as well.
On the topic of Dave Wilson fruit which actually live up to the hype, I have been looking at a number of varieties to add to the grove, I just need some second opinions. Either way, I'm tearing up the CnC this year.
Ones I have been looking at are:
Geo Pride, Flavor Grenade, Emerald Drop, and Arctic Star which I hear is liked by Rob, so that will almost certainly be added.
I obtained a Flavor King from the opportunity table at one of our club meetings, I would like to verify it's worth keeping around as well. It failed to flower this year, hopefully due to size, not chilling requirements.
Tropic Gold seems good enough to keep, but after trying the seedling at my friend's house, I might just graft half the tree over to that one even though they ripen at similar times.