What’s green and fuzzy (or gold and hairless)?
They’re funny and fuzzy, but oh so sweet. Kiwi time is here!
With its green flesh and distinctive brown skin, this oddball winter fruit hits its peak when most others are long gone. Its unusual taste is like a summer smoothie; part banana, strawberry and melon with a tropical twist. That makes fresh kiwi an interesting alternative for cold-weather meals and munching.
California produces more than 98% of the American kiwi crop. Harvested in October and November (then kept in cold storage), California kiwi will be available through early May.
“Overall, the quality and the size are quite good,” said Nick Matteis of the Sacramento-based California Kiwifruit Administrative Committee. “Packing just wrapped up this (last) week. It’s a good sized crop; not huge, but good. We’re not seeing a lot of really small fruit, which is good, too.”
This year’s crop totaled more than 30,000 tons, on par with 2016. That may sound like a lot of kiwi, but it’s just a slice of the global kiwi supply of more than 1.3 million tons.
If you guessed that New Zealand leads the world in kiwi, you’d be wrong. The Kiwis rank third in production of their namesake fruit behind China and Italy, but most imported kiwi in the U.S. does come from New Zealand.
Originally called “Chinese gooseberry” (although no relation to gooseberries), kiwi were introduced accidentally to New Zealand in 1904. According to kiwi lore, the principal of a girl’s school brought back some seeds from China as a souvenir.
In their native China, these hairy berries are called mihoutao — “macaque fruit” — a reference to the macaque monkeys that love to eat kiwi in the wild. (Only recently did China become the world’s leading commercial grower of kiwi, primarily for jam.)
Now, kiwi are grown extensively around the world in areas with a Mediterranean climate. Chile, Greece, France, Turkey and Iran all grow more kiwi than California.