The new in the old, November 7, 2005

Saturday night and my kids are stuffing ice packs in their shirts. I am FREEEEZING!!! they yell while running around and laughing wildly. How wonderful to feel so excited by such simple, new things. How many times I have daydreamed about jumping out of my office ecstatically proclaiming to the team: Look at what WhiteOut can do! Or The paperclip worked again! When we keep learning new things, life can surprise us and wake us up. Sometimes you have to consciously whack-yourself on the side of the head to look at the same thing differently. Take the Arkansas Black Apples, for example. We featured these in the newsletter last week, and this week, we were lucky enough to get them again but from a different grower. This week, the dark purple Heirloom apples, first found in Benton County, Arkansas in 1870, are from Bierwagens farm in the foothills outside of Grass Valley, California. It is interesting to compare last weeks apple with this weeks. They are the same variety, but the taste is slightly different. Let me explain.

I believe that fruit grows and tastes differently based on the region. The wine industry is the original pro at defining this. The concept of appellation has helped consumers understand what the growing region and general conditions are in a given area. Those two things, along with the weather and other variables, relate to the quality and taste of a given wine. I have always wondered why the fruit industry does not take the lead from the wine growers on this issue. Wine is produced from fruit, and although we ask where a particular wine may come from, we do not ask what region table grapes or any other fruit are grown in.

Find out for yourself by trying the same fruit from two different farms in different regions!

Enjoy and be fruitful! – Chris Mittelstaedt chiefbanana@fruitguys.com