Orange tree terroir

Lord knows how scientists may have manipulated orange genetics since John McPhee reported this in 1966, but here’s a little bit about the where involved with oranges.

He writes that taste and aroma vary based on “the position of the individual orange in the framework of the tree on which it grew. Ground fruit — the orange that one can reach and pick from the ground — is not as sweet as fruit that grows high on the tree. Outside fruit is sweeter than inside fruit. Oranges grown on the south side of the tree are sweeter than oranges grown on the east or west sides, and oranges grown on the north side are the least sweet of the lot. The quantity of juice in an orange, and even the amount of vitamin C is contains, will follow the same pattern of variation. Beyond this, there are differentiations of quality inside a single orange. Individual segments vary from one another in their content of acid and sugar.”

In “Oranges,” his book developed from New Yorker articles, the Catch-22 becomes obvious to McPhee when he checks to see if a restaurant offers fresh juice at breakfast.

“There were never any request for fresh orange juice, the waitress explained, apparently unmindful of the one that had just been made. ‘Fresh is either too sour or too watery or too something,’ she said. ‘Frozen is the same every day. People want to know what they’re getting.'”

Then he strikes up a conversation with a couple at the next table. “. . . they had an orange grove on their property, with three kinds of oranges, so that ripe fruit was on their trees almost eight months of the year. All year long, they said, they drank concentrate at breakfast. They hadn’t made juice from the fruit on their trees for more than ten years.”

People knew what they were getting.

But what was the price?