Two Very Tasty Pluots

You might compare the flavor of a pluot to a blend of fruit juices. That’s why you will often hear the pluot described as intensely sweet and fruity.

That’s not too surprising given that the pluot’s parents are the plum and the apricot. Because the pluot is ¾ plum, it is no surprise that it has a plum-like shape, skin and flesh. The pluot also has the plum’s texture and rich, juicy sweetness.

Five friends tasted five different pluot varieties available at the farm market this week. The pluots they tasted were: Emerald Beauty, Flavor Treat, Flavor Grenade, Dapple Dandy, and Black Cat.

They rated two varieties well ahead of the others. They were partial to Flavor Grenade and Emerald Beauty, with Flavor Grenade being the favorite of four of the five tasters.

Here’s how Flavor Grenade and Emerald Beauty compared:

Emerald Beauty has a deep rich yellow to emerald green skin and is conical like an apricot, though larger. Eaten out of hand, its flesh is amber and plum-like near the surface but descends to an apricot-like pit that separates from the flesh just like an apricot. While the initial taste is sweet and plum-like, the aftertaste is remarkably apricot. The flesh immediately around the pit has almost the exact texture and taste of an apricot.

Flavor Grenade has the more traditionally rounded shape of a large plum and its coloring is similar to a light skinned plum with streaks and speckles of amber and red. Eaten out of hand its flesh is amber to the pit with a plum-like texture and juiciness to the last bite.

While the flavor of the Emerald Beauty is reminiscent of the apricot, the Flavor Grenade is simply an explosion of sweet fruit juices: the rich sweetness of a ripe plum and the drippy sugary taste of a very ripe apricot. “Wow!” is how one of our tasters described it.