As the cherry season continues to build and choice gets bigger and bigger, the novelty of seasonality continues to shrink.
With the exception of Rainier, it is difficult to identify varieties by sight, so Tesco is offering stalkless variety Picota from Spain in a boldly labelled pack, priced attractively at 90p for 250g.
The UK’s number-one retailer also made the national media with a black raspberry originating in the US and now grown here, called Mac Black, priced at £2 for 125g. It looks like a wild blackberry, although it tastes different.
What caught shoppers’ eyes in Waitrose were shelf barkers proclaiming that the premium retailer “loves life”. The new message appears on some pre-packs such as Sussex-grown Red Choice tomatoes, priced at £2.59 for a minimum of six fruits. The logo belongs to a wider range of 270 lines of healthy food and drink, which is the largest launch since the appearance of Waitrose’s Essentials range.
It is now time for European stonefruit to pour into the UK. One traditional source, Italy, has already got sendings underway, with the arrival at Sainsbury’s of yellow-flesh Spring Crest peaches at £2 for four. They are dominantly labelled Zingburst, as part of the chain’s branding exercise.
There are also new arrivals in Marks & Spencer’s salad range, priced at £2 and averaging around 60g. One description should fuel interest, with one pack labelled as a “zesty orange salad with crimson sparks”. A closer look reveals that apart from citrus peel, the new ingredient is red amaranth (three per cent), combined with baby lambada, chard and lamb’s lettuce.
Other contenders in the range are a red watercress, spring onion and chive mix, and an aromatic salad of mizuna (45 per cent), pak choi (32 per cent), spinach, baby coriander and edible flowers.
Peppers, of course, are part of the salads sector, although they have been identified as having other uses. In the same M&S, green variety Padron is labelled and targeted at people who have fond memories of Spanish tapas.
No comments yet