With stonefruit season in full swing, everyone's enjoying summer with plums, nectarines, apricots and peaches. Whether you enjoy a juicy Nectara™ nectarine by the pool, or grilling the MONTAGUE tree™ or CROC EGGS™ plums on the barbecue, there is an abundance of flavours to suit all personal flavour preferences. From a tangy plum to a sweet white nectarine, stonefruits come in all different flavours, shapes, colours, sizes and are ready for you now!
When you're browsing your local supermarket shelves for your favourite delicious stonefruit, do you ever wonder how it got there? The process of how stonefruit travels from the orchard, to the supermarket, to your fruit bowl, is pretty fascinating:
From the orchard:
During spring, our orchards around Australia are adorned with beautiful stonefruit blossoms. Pollination occurs here, a process which allows fruit to grow to its highest quality. Pollination is when bees collect and transfer the pollen grain from the male part of the flower, the stamen, to the female part, the stigma, enabling fertilisation which turns blossoms into stonefruit. Come summer, stonefruit thrives under the sunny weather, growing beautifully for harvest. Here's a fact for you: the MONTAGUE tree™ and CROC EGGS™ plums are hand-picked from the outer edges of orchard trees, so they receive optimal sunlight to look and taste their best!
To the supermarket:
Before stonefruit enters your local supermarket, it'll begin the packing process. After a preliminary quality inspection, stonefruit will then need to pass three different quality checks, which help to grade the fruit on overall quality. Our expert team of Quality Control operators carry out the following steps:
Step 1: Fruit is inspected for imperfections, such as bruising, blemishes and cuts.
Step 2: Using a penetrometer, our team of quality experts will check the pressure of the fruit, ensuring it has the ideal firmness and texture.
Step 3: Fruit will undergo Brix (sugar) checks. Using a refractometer, the quality team will measure the total dissolved sugar content - the Brix - to ensure fruit is of the highest quality nature can grow.
Once fruit has passed through these quality checks, it is ready to be packed and sent to the supermarket, local greengrocers, markets and some selected fruit to export markets such as Malaysia.
To your fruit bowl:
Once you've picked up some stunning stonefruit from your local supermarket or greengrocer, the best way to store it is in the fruit bowl. Everyone has their preferences, but storing stonefruit in the fruit bowl is the best way to ensure its freshness. This allows the fruit to ripen naturally and maintain its internal texture, colour and flavour.
Stonefruit is much more than a pick-me-up snack or BBQ crowd-favourite. Did you know the numerous health benefits of stonefruit? For example:
- Plums are an excellent source of fibre, and contain vitamin C for a healthy immune system*.
- Peaches and nectarines provide a source of fibre and potassium.
- Apricots are high in vitamin A and vitamin C.
Keep enjoying Australian-grown stonefruit. To learn more about stonefruit, as well as fruit in season,
upcoming events and more, subscribe to the Montague Farms monthly mail list. Click here.
*Based on 1 medium peach/nectarine, or two medium plums (150g), as part of a healthy balanced diet.
