The Sweetest Thing

From Vogue Magazine, June 2002

If you're anything like me, you face a truly major peach problem as summer approaches. Last summer brought to my doorstep the best of peaches and the worst of peaches. The worst cam efrom fancy food shops here in Manhatten, fabled for their quality and atmospheric prices. More tragically, the worst also came from our local farmers' market. And the best came from the Vogue Peach Project (VPP), a costly, exhausting, three-year-long, nationwide search for peaches that one might actually want to eat - perfectly ripe, luscious, sweet, and fragrant peaches.

Our game plan was simpleminded yet ambitious. We began by collecting the names of growers whose peaches were reputed to be extremely good or even better than that. We pored over articles in magazines and newspapers, telephoned agricultural departments and farmers' markets in Georgia, South Carolina, and California - three of the four states that produce the most peaches - and leading restaurant chefs in those areas as well, plus fruit wholesalers and retailers to the carriage trade. (New Jersey is the fourth of the top four, and we tasted fruit from several of its well-regarded growers at the nearby Union Square Greenmarket.)

Then we telephoned our entire roster of admired peach growers, and asked two key questions. The first was how ripe they pick their peaches. For several important reasons we'll get into later, we were looking for growers who leave their peaches on the tree until just before they drop of their own accord. Growers who passed this test were then asked whether they ship their peaches to customers far away. And from those still in the game, we ordered peaches - beginning in the summer of 1999 and continuing until 2001.

We did sample several boxes of fruit from growers wh oordinarily do not ship their crop but who made an exception in our case just to show us what we're missing. I'll admit that we were not eager to discover that at some dusty roadside stand in the middle of South Carolina there are finer peaches than we had ever tasted. There probably are, though we didn't taste any. I've just heard of a farmer in the Finger Lakes region of New York State who picks his peaches dead ripe and gently carries them, two at a time, one in each hand, to a little table in front of his house. But I do not plan to move to South Carolina or Canadaigua until it is absolutely necessary.

I also managed to tour the major California farmers' markets, often sacrificing my own rest and comfort to do so, as on the morning I arose at 4:00 AM in New Orleans - my large and excellent Creole dinner barely digested - so that I could fly to Los Angeles in time to reach the Wednesday Santa Monica farmers' market before it closed. Between San Francisco's Ferry Plaza market and Santa Monica, you can sample two-thirds of California's best peaches.

The peaches and nectarines began rolling in, hundreds and hundreds of them. (Nectarines are smooth-skinned peaches, not hybrids.) We tasted and took notes on nearly every one. Shipping peaches by overnight express is an expensive proposition - the price of postage always exceeds the price of the peaches. As we always insisted upon a grower's ripest specimens, as many as a third of the peaches or nectarines in some shipments arrived unrecognizable. But for the VPP's nationwide search, cost was no object.

How does one judge a peach? It's easy: by looks, by texture, by juiciness, and by flavor. Looks are much more important in a supermarket than in my mailbox. The texture should be melting and the juiciness expressive and uncontrollable. But it's the falvor we care most about, a honeyed sweetness balanced by enough acidity to give the fruit character and interest, plus a generous helping of aroma. (Several excellent varieties of white peaches and nectarines have little acid, but they make up for it with their full and floral aroma and their preternatural sweetness.) The fragrance of some fruits - bananas are a fine example - is composed of one or a small number of vaporous substances called "character impact compounds," and can be easily simulated in a laboratory. The aroma of fruits such as the peach is a tht eopposite end of the spectrum, made up of tiny amounts of many compounds., and recombining them to simulate the fruit's aroma often roves impossible. The only way to experience the perfume of a ripe peach is to smell a ripe peach.

After we'd tasted just a few dozen of the thousand peaches we would orde, it became apparant that many growers only talk a good game. But we gradually learned to identify those few growers whose entire lives are devoted to producing perfect peaches. Sometimes they succeed. For good reason their fruit is often expensive.

Peaches and nectarines picked before they are completely ripe will never ripen properly off the tree. They are hardly worth the names of peach and nectarine. Here's what happens as a peach ripens on the tree: It becomes sweeter and sweeter; its green chlorophyll fades, and the underlying red and golden hues assert themselves, both in the background color of the skin and in the flesh; its aroma becomes ethereal and inoxicating (or, to be more down-to-earth, it smells like a peach); it softens, beginning with the shoulders (the plump flesh around the stem); it loses much of its acidity and astringency; and it becomes voluptuous and juicy.

When a peach is picked, everythig changes. It stays alive for days, even weeks under refrigeration - but in a wholly different way. Disconnected from its roots, it can take in no water. Separated from its leaves, it burns its own stored sugar for energy and never develops the full range and quantities of aromatic compounds. (Some fruit, such as bananas, ripen nearly perfectly off the tree; when picked green, they are full of starch, which converts into sugar as they soften on our countertop and their skin turns yellow. But peaches are different.) The one way in which a peach picked unripe does improve is by growing softer and more juicy as the pectin that glues the cells together begins to dissolve. It "ripens" into a weak-tasting, yielding, somewhat juicy, completely forgettable sphere.

I have read a pile of textbooks on stone fruit, pomology, and postharvest physiology - plus scientific abstracts about the flavor and quality of peaches.Everybody agrees that peaches and nectarines do not further develop their God-given sweetness and aroma once they are picked. The problem is that most peaches must be harvested unripe and very firm if they are to withstand mechanical picking, sorting, and packing, and at least a week of transportation to supermarkets across the country.

Even worse, if these peaches are refrigerated at temperatures between 36 and 45 degrees F for more than a week, their flesh becomes dry and flavorless and "woolly." Again, everybody knows that this sort of "chilling injury" can be avoided by intermittent warming - by bringing he fruit to room temperature every so often. It amazes me that there are people in the produce business who aren't even willing to make the effort.

The absolutely worst peaches and nectarines are those pickes not only unripe but not even mature or fully grown. They will never soften. You can spot a mature peach by seeing whether the shoulders and the suture (the bulge along the line that runs from top to bottom) are fully filled out, and whether the background color of its skin has lost all tinges of green. Pay no attention to the red blush - some fine varieties never show it, and many others have been bred to turn red prematurely. The only purpose of this is to fool the public. The only fitting punishment for this is life imprisonment. No matter how hard and long you try to ripen an immature peach at home, it will always be tasteless, dry, and either mealy or spongy or rubbery. Then it will shrivel.

A few years ago I spoke with a huge California grower of nectarines who objected to my negative attitude. "People out here," he said, "like their nectarines real crunchy." No wbreeders have created yellow-fleshed peaches and nectarines that, lacking all acidity, seem to taste sweet though they lack all flavor and character, and very firm white fruit that, also lacking acid, tastes sweeter than they are, and may inherently possess a greater fragrance than yellow peaches.

Peach breeders are also capable of inventing and introducing the most wonderful new varieties. Peach trees live for only about twelve years and must then be replaced often. Without breeding, the peach might well be extinct by now. The same breeder who created so manu of these regrettable low-acid and white-fleshed fruit - Floyd Zaiger, near Modesto, California - also invented the Pluot, a fruit that will dramatically increase the general happiness of man- and womankind.

Have you ever tasted a perfectly ripe peach? I am one of the lucky ones. I grew up with a fantastically fecund peach tree in the backyard, 20 feet tall, which is tall for a peach tree, and apparently immortal. It grew right next to our house, and as it was always in danger of crashing into it, somebody pruned off a few branches every year. Otherwise it required no care and in return for nothing produced dozens of huge, sweet, juicy peaches, more than we could eat or give away. The house was white and operated, I figure, as a sun reflector, concentrating what feeble light we received in the suburbs of New York City onto the chloroplasts within the leaves, which produce glucose and oxygen out of nothing but sun and water.

Are we the first generation in the history of mankind that can't take the perfect peach for granted - one with golden, yielding flesh, lusty and ethereal at the same time, brimming with the sweetest, most aromatic juices? Yes, we probably are. Peaches originated in prehistoric Tibet and China, where they were cultivated - transplanted, pruned, thinned, and crossbred - so wonderfully that they became the subject of lyric poetry, or at least their blossoms did. From ancient China, humans brought peach trees to nearby regions with fitting climates such as Kashmir, and then to Persia, where peaches flourished so famously that centuries later they were given the Latin name Prunus persica. From Persia, Alexander the Great brought the peach to Greece, from which it spread to the rest of Europe. Then, after nearly two millennia had whizzed by, the Spanish conquistadors brought peach trees to the New World, and from Mexico the peach reached what would become the American South, probably through the efforts of Native American farmers.

The peach tree is a prima donna. It does not flourish at temperatures much above 90 degrees F and dies when it is frozen. And yet it demands a good number of chilling nights before ti buds. Why has humankind labored to cultivate and propogate this high-maintenance fruit for the past 10,000 years? There can be only one reason - a perfect, fresh peach is one of the most delicious things on earth. The purpose of a ripe peach is pure delight. Simply ask a huma who has just eaten one, or simply ask a peach.

Here's what any peach would tell you if it could talk. The mission of every living thing is to propogate its own collection of genes, its genome. Anatomically, fruits are ovaries - they consist of one or many seeds attached to fleshy tissue. Strawberries wear their seeds on the outside. A watermelon is a placenta, but let's not go there. PEaches, plums, apricots, and nectarines depend on animals to carry off their large, heavily armored seeds. They have only their inherent attraction, their color and their complete lusciousness, to lure these animals into their plan. The peach surely hit the jackpot when it discovered human beings. Through us alone this little Sino-Tibetan bauble has colonized the world.

It triumphed by making itself so dreamy and delicious that in eveyr age and time, for the past 10,000 years and more, men and women have refused to live or travel very far from their peach trees. Humans have gone to fantastic lengths to avoid having a peach problem. If peahes had never become more delectable than the common run of peaches in commerce today, I seriously doubt the fruit would ever have escaped from Tibet and the mountains of western China. Who would have bothered to carry it even a few feet?

And so for nearly three years, the VPP ordered and tasted boxes upon boxes of peaches shipped overnight from far and wide. Early in the proces I received a message from my old Seattle friend Jon Rowley, professional expert on fish and oysters, who has effortlessly expanded into peaches. Jon enclosed a refractometer on condition that I use it to test everything in sight. He had become a consultant and adviser to the Queen Anne Thriftway, an unusual and interesting supermarket in Seattle, and their Peach-O-Rama program - every summer they sell 90,000 of the finest, ripest peaches they can find. Jon had formulated several theories about peaches, and he wished his friends to help out. I had always wanted to own a refractometer.

A refractometer is an optical instrument used to measure the percentage of a liquid made up of soluble solids. In the case of peach juice, most of the soluble solids are sugars - glucose, sucrose, maltose, and fructose. My refractometer is a brushed-aluminum tube with an eyepiece at one end and a long, angled prism at the other. You squeeze a few drops of peach juice onto the surface of the prism and peer through the eyepiece, and as plin as day you see the number of Brix - really percentage of sugar - in the peach juice. It is called Brix instead of "percentage" in honor of A.F.W. Brix (1798-1890), a German scientist who invented the Brix scale for measuring the specific gravity of a sugar solution. I love my refractometer and keep it with me whenever there is a peach at hand.

Whenever a new peach arrived, we would wait (if this was necessary) until it had softened properly and breathed its fragrance into the air. Then we would rinse it off, cut out a few wedges, taste them, and give our appraisal, which one of us would record. And then we would turn to the matter of Brix. I would guess at how much sugar the peach contained and then we would get the scientific answer from our refractometer. Very few peaches tested lower than 8 Brix (8 percent sugar) or higher than 16 Brix. Rowley believes that the Brix will tell you nearly everything you need to know about a peach. I believe that Brix is only part of the story. In the end, both of us were equally right. Or wrong.

The first year, our work was haphazard. Years ago I had discovered the excellent peaches grown by Ron Mansfield at Goldbud Farms in Placerville, California, center of the Gold Rush, and site of the first elevator in the West. (To say that I discovered Ron really means that Elaine Corn, then of The Sacramento Bee, had told me all about him.) All through the summer of 1999, we ordered and tested Goldbud peaches, sampled dozens of other peaches from stores around Manhattan, and bought a few boxes from the Queen Anne Thriftway. Jon Rowley's Peach-O-Rama program was in full swing, with peaches from Pence Orchards in Washington State and from "Farmer Al" Courchesne's amazingly organic Frog Hollow Farm in Brentwood, California (not the Los Angeles Brentwood but a town about 90 minutes due east of San Francisco). We came to no firm conclusions but were glad to enjoy dozens of luscious peaches. My mouth waters as I write. If I drool on my computer keyboard, I will void the warranty. Then I turn angry and resentful. Why should a supermarket in the antipodes have a thriving ripe-peach program, and there be none in my Manhattan?

By the second and third summers, our investigation had grown orderly, with long lists of growers from around he country and several dozen new peaches arriving every week. Some stars emerged. Ron Mansfield's Elegant Lady peach at 17 Brix was scrumptious - juicy, melting, sweet, and just acidic enough; one Scarlet Lady at 16.2 Brix was excellent, but another was watery and too acidic. Frog Hollow Farm sent a staggering Ruby Grand nectarine in one of their earliest shipments of 2000; it was dead ripe, 19.5 Brix, and nearly spectacular, though it would have benefited from a bit more acidity. There followed two dull Ruby Grands and then a paragon of the species at 21 Brix. My respect for the nectarine soared.

Soon, peaches and nectarines arrived from South Carolina and Georgia (sadly and surprisingly, nothing to rave about), and from Stonewall, Texas. The Texans were Flame Princes, shipped much too hard; after they had softened for a few days, their taste was high average with a Brix of 16. Imagine if they had been picked succulent and ripe!

The best peaches we tasted were all from California. Ernie Bierwagen from Donner Trail in northern California - who has supplied fruit to Chez Panisse, among other discriminating buyers - sent always interesting peaches and nectarines with either fascinating flavors but sppressed sugar, or soaring sugar with mild flavor. His Alamar white peach possessed an amazing fragrance and his Sierra Lady had a very fine flavor; his Suncrest peaches were amazingly sugary. I had read so much about the virtues of the Rio Oso Gem, but Bierwagen's were less than spectacular; maybe they all are. I cannot wait to order more of his Alamars and Sierra Ladies.

One Brix champion emerged early in the summer of 2001, when Art Lange, a famous small grower at Honeycrisp in Reedley, near Fresno, at the geographical heart of California's peach industry, sent some Arctic Queen white nectarines that tipped the scales at 25.5 Brix, more than one-quarter sugaar! Can any more sugar than this dissolve in water at room temperature? (I'll do a test and tell you.) We had never tasted anything like it, though it was, in a sense, merely a sport of nature, with little taste other than its sugar. Formerly at the University of California at Davis, and now pushing 80, Art was a pioneer, along with nearby Fitzgerald Kelly, in growing white nectarines in 1989. Art's fruit arrived throughout the summer, often spectacular but not always in fine shape. Another of his Arctic Queens was only (only!) 21 Brix but had a nicer acid tinge, and a Pluot with 19 percent sugar was revelatory. Fruit from Fitzgerald Kelly varied wildly but did include two amazing Snow Giants (18 and 19.2 Brix) and a Kaweah at 18.3.

I've looked it up. At room temperature, water is capable of dissovling twice its weight in sugar! That would be 200 Brix. OK, so I was totally wrong. Frankly, I don't care. Art's 25.5 Arctic Queen was amazing nonetheless.

Even more amazing was an Arctic Glo grown by the Chino family in San Diego County; they are famous for their vegetables and berries, but they have recently been branching out (ha-ha) into stone fruit, planting a few rows of trees here and there on their farm. One afternoon, we walked over to a nice-looking Arctic Glo white nectarine tree. Tom Chino picked one and brushed it off, and I quickly consumed it. I reeled and staggered into a deep and loamy drainage ditch. The fruit was so incredibly luscious that I forgot to measure its sugar! Now, many months later, I have recovered sufficiently from the experience to wonder whether a tiny drop of acid wouldhave brought it to perfection.

By the end of the summer of 2001, we had settled on three California growers as our favorites, and I drove around to their orchards. But that is a story for another time.

A few notes towards a general theory of peaches: Peach scientists believe that a consumer's perception of sweetness or sourness is realted to the ratio of sugars and acids. So an acid-free peach will taste sweet even at low levels of sugar, at low Brix. The flavor impact of a tomato, however, is thought to depend on both sugars and acids. I believe the same is true of peaches, though not as dramatically. With the exception of the best of the white nectarines and peaches, a high-Brix yellow peach with little acid will be unsatisfying. But the more acid there is in a peach, the less sweet it tastes - even if its sugar level is high.

What this means is that a slightly satisfying peach needs at least 13 or 14 percent sugar, if it has no acid, and should contain more like 18 or 19 percent sugar if it does. I have never tasted a peach grown in the Northeastern states as sweet as this. Only my favorite California growers can regularly deliver the goods (and not all that regularly), and that's by leaving their peaches and nectarines on the tree until they are almost too soft to ship. (Maybe they should pay more attention to space-age developments in packaging.)

At a market or in a produce shop, you cannot measure the sugar level of a peach or nectarine without cutting into it. This will anger the proprietor. The best way to choose a peach (after you've felt the soft shoulders and observed the golden background color) is fragrance. The aroma of a peach develops with or even after its sweetness. Peaches do not need to be cross-pollinated by bees from tree to tree. The heady aroma of a peach, I feel, was created for our noses only.

Have I forgotten to mention the fantastic cherries and apricots that Ron and Farmer Al will send you at the drop of a phone call? I am already counting the days until the peach season arrives, and with it my boxes of luscious fruit. With postage and triage, you may end up paying as much as $6 or $7 a peach. Is this expensive? For one of the greatest pleasures on earth? Not compared with that bottle of San Pellegrino you had at lunch today.