Raspberries

For Raspberries, Ubiquity (at a Price) (New York Times article hosted on AZcentral.com, contains advertisements) discusses the challenges and opportunities of the North American raspberry-growing industry.

The article begins with an interview of a California producer who has developed a technique for year-round production; the trade-off, the company admits, is a reduction in flavour.

However, as writer David Karp exclaims, some commercially-grown raspberries do retain the flavours found in heritage varieties, including the relatively new hybrid, 'Tulameen'.

David Karp writes on the heritage variety Rose de Cote d'Or and then Tulameen: “They resembled raspberry candy and were very sweet, with balancing acidity and a powerful, lingering aroma. If only store-bought berries could be like this...Perhaps they can...Tulameen, a large, luscious variety introduced in 1989 from British Columbia. It is considered the standard of quality in Europe, with an ancestry that includes Willamette, an old Northwest processing variety, for high flavor, and Cumberland black raspberry, for firmness.”

'Tulameen' was bred by one of UBC Botanical Garden's Friends of the Garden, Hugh Daubeny, a research scientist retired from Agriculture Canada and well-known strawberry and raspberry breeder.

Link: Rubus idaeus 'Tulameen' photographs

Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:33 AM on July 8, 2004

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