Which Plums Are the Sweetest? Top Picks from the Pros

It’s 2 p.m. on a summer afternoon, and you’re staring at your office’s fruit bowl. It’s full of different varieties of plums, peaches, and nectarines. You’re not sure which fruit to grab—which plums are the sweetest again? 

If that scenario sounds familiar, you’re in the right place. Our team at The FruitGuys has delivered farm-fresh fruit to offices for more than 25 years, so we know a thing or two about how they taste. Here’s a guide to some of the sweetest varieties that our fruit buyers and farm partners recommend. 

How We Measure Sweetness

Before we get into our expert picks, let’s chat about how we measure sweetness in plums and other fruits. The official way to do this is by checking the fruit’s brix value with a refractometer. 

Brix is a measurement of the sugar in a piece of fruit, and it’s measured in degrees. As a rule of thumb, 1° Brix equals 1% sugar. So, a plum with a brix value of 14 (14° Brix) would be 14% sugar. The higher the brix, the sweeter the fruit! Brix is a helpful measurement, but it can vary from fruit to fruit and farm to farm depending on things like weather, soil, and other factors.  

Farmers and fruit buyers often check the brix value of different fruits to make sure they’re sweet enough for people to enjoy. But there’s also a less formal and more subjective way to measure sweetness—the simple taste test. Farmers who grow the same variety of plum year after year and taste their crop every time have a good sense of which plums are the sweetest based on that experience alone.

For their recommendations, some of our experts noted the fruit’s brix value, while others relied on years of taste-testing experience. 

Which Plums Are the Sweetest? Experts Weigh In

Surprisingly, some of the sweetest plums aren’t plums at all—they’re plum hybrids! Specifically, our fruit experts mentioned pluots (plum-apricot hybrids that are mostly plum) and cherry plums (cherry-plum hybrids). Here are their top picks. 

Crimson Beauty Pluots

Parker Anderson, a sales category manager with Homegrown Organic Farms, told The FruitGuys that Crimson Beauty pluots top his sweetness list. 

“Its mottled skin is attractive to the eye, and the sweet red to yellow flesh is juicy and crisp,” he said.

Elephant Heart Plums

Elephant Heart plums (aka blood plums) are one of The FruitGuys Produce Buyer Miguel Esteban Robles’ favorites. They’re extremely sweet, with deep purple skin, red flesh, and a super juicy texture. 

Golden Globe Plums

Fourth-generation stone fruit farmer Dorothy Boldt of D.E. Boldt told The FruitGuys that the Golden Globe is the sweetest plum her family grows. 

“It’s brixing at 24° and 25°—that’s 25% sugar!” she said. 

The Golden Globe is a pretty yellow plum with a rosy blush and honey flavor notes. 

Verry Cherry Plums

Miguel also voted for Verry Cherry plums—sweet plum and cherry hybrids. They’re smaller than typical plums, with speckled red skin, yellow flesh, and a nice crunch when you take a bite. 

More Options to Enjoy

If you can’t find those varieties, look for green plum varieties like the Greengage and Emerald Beaut (both notably sweet) and green plumcots like the Flavor Queen. 

Pro Tip: Sweetest Isn’t Always Best 

Several of our fruit experts mentioned that the sweetest plums aren’t typically their favorites. Instead, they told us that a complex flavor combining sweetness and tartness makes for the best bite. 

“Think of a graph where the X axis is acid and the Y axis is sugar,” Dorothy said. “The fruits that I like best are in the top right quadrant of that graph—they have high acid but also have quite a bit of sugar. They don’t taste really sweet, but the sugar is still there, and the high acid brings out so many flavors in the fruit.” 

Ultimately, the best way to figure out which plums are the sweetest and best-tasting to you is to taste them yourself! Try as many varieties as you can and keep track of your favorites. You might find that, like Dorothy, the sweet and mild ones don’t top your list. 

Get Fresh Plums and More Delivered to Your Office

If you want to enjoy a wide variety of plums and other fruits at work, try fresh fruit delivery from The FruitGuys. We make it easy to keep your office break room stocked with recurring orders, and have several curated seasonal fruit mixes to choose from. 

In the summer, you can often find farm-fresh plums in our Harvest Mix (our widest variety of seasonal fruit) and our Season’s Best Box (our most highly seasonal mix). Happy snacking!