December 12, 2007
From China, Only in a Bottle, a Berry With an Alluring Name
By DAVID KARP
YUMBERRY sounds more like the creation of an advertising agency than of nature — like Cherry Garcia or Juicy Fruit. But while the name was dreamed up a few years ago to help sell the fruit’s juice, which is just now appearing in stores around the country, the fruit has been grown for 2,000 years in China. It’s so popular there that about twice as many acres are devoted to growing it as the number devoted to apple orchards in the United States.
The purplish juice has a sweet-tart flavor like a lighter version of pomegranate or mulberry. Like many dark juices, it’s rich in antioxidant compounds, and the first company to market it here, Frützzo, is hoping to ride the booming demand for such products.
“We think yumberry’s the next pomegranate,” said Terry Xanthos, president of Frützzo, based in Alpine, Utah.
In New York, Gristede’s markets will start selling Frützzo brand yumberry juice next week; it’s already available at Meijer stores in the Midwest; in the Southeast, Costco sells a yumberry-pomegranate blend; and Whole Foods stores around the country plan to carry yumberry juice in a month or two. A 12-ounce bottle of Frützzo organic yumberry juice costs about $3.60; the “natural” version (which the company says is pesticide-free) is about $3. The company also offers blends with cherry and blueberry. In addition to Frützzo, several other marketers are planning to introduce yumberry juice next year.
The fresh fruit, called yang-mei, is not yet available for sale in the United States. It is chewy and juicy with a pit like a cherry. Most varieties have a bumpy purple or red surface, like a litchi, although the skin is edible.
There are yang-mei festivals and pick-your-own orchards in the main growing area, Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai. Vendors by the side of country roads sell yang-mei in little baskets covered with ferns, and visitors sit under the trees and feast on ripe fruit.
The tree that bears this fruit, Myrica rubra, is native to southeastern China, and related to the bayberry species whose fruits are used for making candles in the United States.
The Chinese name means poplar-plum; in English it is called red bayberry or Chinese bayberry. The name yumberry was coined about 2003 by Charles Stenftenagel, a garden products importer from Indiana, when he was visiting a friend in Shanghai who owned a company that bottled the juice.
“Since the way they pronounced yang-mei in their dialect was ‘yang-mee,’ it sounded a little like ‘yummy,’ and that gave me the idea to call it ‘yumberry,’” Mr. Stenftenagel said. “We thought it might be a catchy name.”
Mr. Xanthos agreed. “It’s the best name in the history of fruit,” he said.
The Chinese harvested yang-mei from the wild for 5,000 years before they cultivated it. The bushy evergreens thrive in the otherwise infertile hillsides in the warm, humid areas from Shanghai to Hainan. In the last 25 years, with the introduction of superior varieties and growing practices, production surged to some 865,000 acres, although much fruit is still gathered from semiwild stands. (By comparison, the United States has about 432,000 acres of apples, about 856,000 of citrus trees and 1,044,000 of grapes, the only American fruit crop with greater acreage.)
The canned fruit is sometimes imported and sold here, mislabeled as arbutus, a Mediterranean fruit of inferior flavor which it superficially resembles. Yang-mei is also processed as a dried, sweetened and salted snack. The fruit is important in traditional Chinese medicine.
For best flavor, fresh yang-mei, harvested from May to mid-July, must be picked ripe, at which point it is as perishable as a raspberry. Although the Chinese have sent small shipments of the fresh fruit to Europe, its importation to the United States is forbidden, to keep out insect pests.
United States Department of Agriculture records say Myrica rubra trees, cuttings or seeds were imported at least 20 times from 1898 to 1962. Frank Meyer, the agricultural explorer known for introducing the Meyer lemon, brought yang-mei from China, and wrote in 1911, “Wherever it could be grown in the United States its fruit would be a very pleasant addition indeed.”
So it seems mysterious that no one is cultivating it in the Southeast, where it could prosper. From about 1960, Ralph Sharpe and Wayne Sherman, fruit breeders at the University of Florida, kept a row of the trees in Gainesville, where three remain. They were grown as ornamentals, and while they bear copiously, the fruit is rather resinous, said Mr. Sherman, now a professor emeritus.
For now, at least, juice is the best way to taste this fruit.