The Flavor Tree Fruit Co. LLC, exclusive sales agent for Warmerdam Packing in Hanford, CA, is heavily focused on cherries during the early season, so the company does not have early production in its peach and nectarine programs.

“We will start in June,” said Maurice (Mo) Cameron, managing partner. “We are a little late, because we no longer have peaches and nectarines that compete with the cherry crop.”

‘Very Cherry Plums,’ a cherry-plum hybrid, from The Flavor Tree.The company’s peach and nectarine programs will continue through September, according to Cameron. “As far as varieties go, we’re concentrating more on traditional varieties in both yellow flesh peaches and nectarines.” That includes freestone yellow peaches with a classic peach flavor, he said. In addition, “we still have a very popular white flesh nectarine and peach program, the majority of which is exported,” although “we offer domestic packs as well.”

In the plum and plum cross category, the company is being quite innovative and aggressive with a couple of specialty varieties.

“A couple of years ago, we added some pretty decent acreage in export plums,” Cameron said. The variety is Emerald Beaut. “Those typically start in August,” and last year, about 95 percent of them were exported to China or Taiwan.

About two years ago, The Flavor Tree added another specialty plum to its product mix, actually a hybrid cross between a plum and a cherry, which the company is marketing under the name “Very Cherry Plum.” That has done “extremely well,” Cameron said. There will be 24 acres of the variety in production this year, “and we just finished [planting] another 52 acres,” which will not start coming into production for another two or three years.

“Last year, we marketed about half of them in the United States, and the other half was exported mostly to Europe or Asia,” he said.

The Flavor Tree expects to expand distribution of the Emerald Beaut plum to Europe this year. “It is a very high Brix plum,” Cameron said. “We like to pick it when it is about 18 Brix,” and it is often as high as 20 Brix, making it much sweeter than “ordinary plums.”

The Very Cherry plums typically range from 17 Brix to 25 Brix, and last year, the average was around 21.6 Brix, he said.

Producing new varieties of fruit that are very high in sugar and have very good flavor profiles “seems to be the new wave of the fruit for us in stone fruit.”

The focus on flavor applies to peaches and nectarines as well, Cameron said. For yellow flesh and white flesh fruit alike, “the idea this year is to start farming for better flavor and have as high a quality piece of fruit [as possible] by managing crop loads better” and by using such cultural practices as light fusion in the orchards to bring up the Brix in the fruit.”

The peach and nectarine varieties The Flavor Tree now offers are “the more traditional free-stone classic taste varieties,” Cameron said. “We no longer have any sub-acid yellow peaches,” although the company does still have some low acid nectarine varieties.