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StrawberriesVARIETIES
AVA: Is a premium Scottish strawberry launched in 2005, Ava is renowned for its flavour as well as the fact that it retains its petals even after ripening. ELSANTA: Still the most popular strawberry in Britain, Elsanta was developed in Holland and first sold in 1975, quickly establishing its supremacy thanks to its dependability, long cropping season and excellent taste. ENGLISH ROSE: This new premium variety is notable for its unusual and outstanding flavour, which is reminiscent of orange zest. EVE’S DELIGHT: An ever-bearing variety (i.e. not affected by day length) developed in Kent, Eve’s Delight combines juicy flavour with excellent shelf life. EVIE: With its distinctive flavour and paler fruit, Evie is an ever-bearer variety that goes particularly well with ice-cream. JUBILEE: Is a premium and fairly new variety to be introduced since Elsanta, Jubilee was developed and first sold in 2002. It has since established itself as one of the best-flavoured varieties of all. SONATA: A large, firm, well-flavoured mid-season variety which was introduced in 2005. (removed mention of the hybrid) SWEET EVE: Sweet Eve is an ever-bearer variety that crops well throughout the summer, with excellent yields and good flavour. RED GLORY: A high yield of firm sweet juicy fruit throughout the season. RED PRINCESS: A variety which produces heart shaped sweet flavour berries throughout the season and this variety has performed well in Scotland. DRISCOLL CAMARILLO: An ever-bearer which crops from mid to late season, Camarillo delivers excellent flavour and is now produced on a large scale. DRISCOLL JUBILEE: Recognised as one of the best UK strawberry eating varieties. Jubilee was bred by Driscolls. SABROSA: Is the preferred “British name” for a variety called Candonga, which is produced in Spain. It has become the main variety grown in Spain destined for the UK, due to its good flavour and ability to be transported. FESTIVAL: Is the main variety grown in both Egypt and Israel due to its firmness. Available in the UK from mid-December to March, Festival is one of the few varieties which produces good quantities of fruit during the month of January. TAMAR: Tamar was bred in Israel and now regarded as the best tasting variety from the Middle East, although its ability to produce high volumes of high quality fruit is low. HISTORY Strawberries have a long and surprisingly complicated history, which takes in the discovery of America, the French Revolution and a sewage works in Isleworth. Until the eighteenth century most people would collect strawberries from the wild, just like people still collect blackberries today. Wild strawberries (whose Latin name is Fragaria vesca) grow all over Britain, but they’re easy to overlook, being tiny, dark crimson and not particularly sweet. The large, juicy, scarlet strawberries we buy today derive from hybrids between the wild Virginian strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) and a Chilean species (Fragaria chiloensis). Virginian strawberries – which were sent back by the first American settlers in the 1620s – had a far better flavour than their European counterparts, but they were hardly any bigger. In 1714, though, they were joined by the Chilean strawberry, which was discovered by the French spy and fireworks expert, Amédée-François Frézier, during an undercover visit to the Chilean port of Concepión. It tasted rather bland, but it was the largest strawberry yet seen, and before long – quite possibly by chance – these two American species produced a hybrid that combined the size of one with the flavour of the other. Unfortunately the French market in luxury strawberries came to an abrupt halt with the Revolution, but France’s loss was Britain’s gain, and the nineteenth century was dominated by British growers, led by Michael Keens, whose once-famous fruit nursery now lies beneath the Isleworth sewage works in London. Despite their long history, virtually no old varieties of strawberries survive, largely because strawberry plants have such short lives, and rarely remain productive for more than a few years. As a result, new varieties are constantly being introduced with greater disease resistance and improved flavour, though the Dutch variety, Elsanta, has remained popular since it was introduced in 1975 and still accounts for something like 60 per cent of the British market. The British strawberry season can begin as early as April from greenhouses , and runs through until October; strawberries from Israel and Egypt arrive on our shelves in November until February whilst Spanish and Moroccan strawberries begin in February and continue until the home-grown British season resumes in early May. |
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