Picked to perfection fruit is just a stone's throw away
San Francisco Chronicle, 7/20/05

By Olivia Wu
Chronicle Staff Writer

Pick up a red bucket and traipse down corridors of full green trees and shrubs. Quick, keep step with the man with the bullhorn and long strides, and he'll stop and show you where you can pick some of the most delectable fruits of the summer.

It happens only a few times each year. Andy Mariani of Andy's Orchard in Morgan Hill will walk and talk you through his 30 acres in Santa Clara County - in what once was Valley of Heart's Desire because of its fecund agriculture - and nearly 250 varieties of old-fashioned and heirloom premium stone fruit. He'll stop where trees have been left unpicked, tell you about the variety and let you pick your own. A Stone Fruit 101 and U-pick day fused under the valley sun.

"The end of July is the apogee of the peach season," he says, and the Baby Crawfords, Suncrests, Silver Logans (white-fleshed with complex flavor), pluots such as Flavor Queen, and plums such as Golden Nectar, Padre and Inca are ripening.

Mariani insists that his fruit be picked by hand and only when ripe. Most commercial peach varieties are now selected for firmness and sugar, he says. "They're just sweet. The older, heirloom varieties have sweetness, acidity and complex flavor. It's a kind that...well, drips. That's my recipe for quality. It oozes juice."

On the July 4 Harvest Walk, nearly 60 seekers traipsed after the farmer. The morning began with a 10am fruit tasting - table after table of peaches, nectarines, plums, pluots, apricots, and the late cherries of the season. Mariani offers tastes of every variety he grows; he sells only 100 commercially. He talks about stone fruit the way a Napa grower talks about grapes and terroir.

Where to find the fruit

Andy's Orchard, 1615 Half Road, Morgan Hill; open during the summer from 10am - 5pm Monday - Friday, until 4pm Saturday - Sunday.

Sigona's, 2345 Middlefield Road (near Woodside Road), Redwood City; and 399 Stanford Shopping Center, Palo Alto, carry some varieties.

Cosentino's markets in San Jose and Santa Clara carry a limited selection.
"You don't want too rich a soil, and not too much water, so you have more intense-flavor fruit," he says. He'll talk about the solids and sugars in fruit and when they form and when they are at maximum. Then, he'll turn around, pluck a nectarine and sink his teeth in. "This Snow Queen is about as near a perfect nectarine as you can get."

Susan Spicer, chef-owner of Bayona in New Orleans, has Mariani's fruit shipped to Louisiana in highly protected boxes. "Ever have this ideal of fruit perfection in your mind? Well I bit into one of Andy's peaches and it brought tears to my eyes," she says.

Mariani, a member of the California Rare Fruit Society and California Cherry Advisory Board's research committee, combines tradition and new agricultural know-how to keep his orchard diverse - and to sustain a chunk of the valley as farmland and out of sprawl.

These old-fashioned peaches and plums - and similar ones from other premier growers - are so ripe when they're picked that you'll want to use them pretty quickly.

For recipes and near-instant ways to capture the flavors of fresh fruit, please view the complete article.