This week’s FarmShares include the delicious fruit: Royal Blenheim Apricots. We thought we’d provide a little history on what they are and where yours are coming from this week.

Some refer to the Royal Blenheim – or the Royal or the Blenheim – as the finest apricot. It’s the variety that truly tastes like an apricot should! It’s a smaller apricot that tends to have a green shoulder, and may not ripen with the total apricot color. These apricots ripen from the inside, and even the green side will have the full apricot flavor. They are very delicate so are difficult to ship. This combined with their less than perfect appearance have made them vanish from commercial production, becoming an endangered fruit (which is why we love our local farms who can offer us these treasures!).

Its history traces back to a seedling planted in the Luxembourg Gardens of Paris, where it was introduced as the Royal around 1815. It made its next appearance in England at Bleinheim Palace where it was called Shipley’s Blenheim (Shipley being the gardener at the Palace).

We’re not the only ones who think it’s special…Slow Food has added it to their US Ark of Taste (a catalog of over 200 foods in danger of extinction) as the heirloom variety that should be saved into perpetuity.

This week’s Royal Blenheims are from Ol’ Green Go Farm in Rumsey, CA.  Ol’ Green Go was started in the 90s when Will Baker, who had been living there since the 70s, retired from UC Davis to begin farming full-time. The farm is about 12.5 acres with 5 acres of orchards – oranges, apricots, plums and Asian pears. His son, Cole Baker, now runs the farm and lives there with his mother, Malinda and sister, Montana. Cole also happens to be our FarmShares driver on Fridays; so if you see him, please thank him for his hard work to get us these special apricots!

By Natasha Tuck

Related posts:

• Royal Apricots — Our Favorite Fruit
• FarmShares for Week of June 21, 2010
• FarmShares for July 1, 2009
• Five Ideas for Green Beans
• Sautéed Green Beans