We have 3 Crème Brûlée trees.
The largest is a topwork and has been fruiting for a while.
Two of them are grafted to experimental dwarfing rootstock that has worked “too well”. One of the 2 is an an unhealthy runt that I really should remove. The other has done better and has fruited a couple times.
The topwork has been a healthy low-to-moderate vigor tree but isn’t in the best position for growth. It had previously been an Eldon tree, but when bacterial black spot proved to be too much of a problem for it, I topworked it into Creme Brûlée around 2016. Some of The neighboring trees were vigorous growers (a Cac and an ST Maui) and there’s also a shade house near to its south.
It flowers pretty easily here. Like some of the other Edward progeny it can have issues with producing disproportionate male flowers but it always sets some fruit. The fruit stay green until mature and then turn dull yellow when they ripen here. In interior areas I imagine they would probably stay green most of the time. It doesn’t get bacterial spot at all, but I could see anthracnose being a problem if conditions are humid enough. It’s flowering now so maybe after it’s done setting it’s crop I can remember to take a picture.
As far as ripening is concerned, we had some issues the first couple crops with softnose/uneven ripening which made me reluctant to sell the fruit to people, but that seems to have gone away the last several years and we’ve sold some of the fruit in recent years with strong positive reports. Probably just needs to be harvested mature green.
Back When I collected the budwood I remember Gary Zill telling me that the original tree had only fruited like 2 times in 14 years or something . But I think It may have fruited more frequently since that time so they finally produced some trees for the public.
The trees have been available long enough that I would have expected some reports from consumers by now, but this is true of some of the other Zill varieties that you hear almost nothing about from backyarders/small growers.
It would be nice to see some feedback because I regard Creme Brûlée as one of the finest flavored members of the Indian/West Indian group. Perhaps even the best of it.