There has always been something a bit too sensuous about a peach to keep its admirers on the straight and narrow. Sooner or later their relationship to a peach becomes physical and their admiring smiles tighten into a leer. Even the splendid and lyrical Epitaph for a Peach by David Masamoto gets slightly well, off his peaches, as he describes eating a Suncrest peach:

“Suncrest is one of the last remaining truly juicy peaches. When you wash that treasure under a stream of cooling water…your mouth waters in anticipation. You lean over the sink to make sure you don’t drip on yourself. Then you sink your teeth into the flesh, and the juice trickles down your cheeks and dangles on your chin.”

I can speculate at some length about why peaches, in particular, have this effect. I can point out its curvaceous outline; its lip-like groove; its terry-cloth fuzzy robe and its enchanting perfume as charms. But I think that the Siren-like appeal of a ripe peach is its flesh. Unlike other fruits peaches yield to the tenderest of bites that a knife can make firm crisp-looking slices, and it is not just yellow, it has a red blush and when really ripe the flesh is almost completely red. Once in the mouth a ripe peach explodes into a sweet elixir while retaining just enough texture that it’s nobody’s snow cone. That peachy quality of yielding, juice-filled flesh is called “melting flesh” by botanists and while the science explaining this characteristic isn’t sensual it is sexy.

Epitaph for a Peach is a book worth reading by David Masumoto. It is about the Suncrest peach that he mourned the loss of from modern agriculture. The Suncrest peach was perishable and did not ship well, but had a superior taste, texture and the messy, running down your face kind of juiciness. He was on the edge of pulling the orchared, and could not bring himself to do it. He still grows them and funnels them through local organic food channels in California, doing his part to save this peach from extinction.

We too have our largest amout of peach tress planted to the Suncrest Peach. The bud wood came from dear friends Gene and Margie Merreill from The Vinegrove Farm in Winters when we started the farm here in the Hungry Hollow in 1983. We actually got the Royal Blenheim apricot, the Suncrest peach (both of which are on the Slow Food Ark) and the Flavor Top Nectarine bud wood from Gene that Jeff budded to our trees. I remember the first years of the Davis Farmers Market buying the last of the Vinegrove fruit on a Saturday market, it was the sloppiest, softest fruit that nobody in their right mind would spend a dine on…or really only the folks that know that this was going to be the best fruit a dime could buy. It was so ripe that it really couldn’t make it to even the farmers market, and everyone passed it by, but it was the sweetest, juiciest fruit on earth.

Ah, heaven right here in Yolo County! We have two other peach varieties and I eat them, but I really don’t pay attention to them, I am waiting for the real deal, the Suncrest! I am really a peach snob, as I won’t eat other peaches from the market either, the texture is mealy, or not that burst of flavor that the Suncrest has and the white varieties of peaches are just pure sugar, no flavor in them at all…see I said I was a peach snob!

By Annie Main, Good Humus Produce

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