101 Years and Done… or maybe not

Aficionados of Aplets and Cotlets received some bad news in March. Liberty Orchards, makers of the confection for more than a century, announced they would shut down operations in June. After a hundred-and-one years, there would be no more Aplets & Cotlets.

Mark Balaban and Armen Tertsagian, Armenian immigrants, owned a small orchard in Cashmere Washington. (Cashmere lies in central Washington, halfway between Wenatchee—home to the annual Apple Blossom Festival—and Leavenworth—a faux Bavarian village popular with tourists.)

The partners started the company in 1920 as way to sell surplus apples. They concocted Aplets, a candy combining apples and walnuts and gelatin. The confection was based on a candy they remembered called Turkish Delight. A few years later they introduced an apricot flavor, called Cotlets.

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