To All,
In 1972 Steve Agresta and I decided to determine which frozen orange juice was best. It was a golden age for frozen orange juice. We scoured the local stores and over a period of weeks were able to find fourteen frozen orange juice brands. We prepared each brand according to the directions on the package, tried it while sober, and marked down our sensory ratings and the price in a table At the end, we tallied up the results, and the winner was clear. We both preferred Valencia brand,and it was one of the cheapest. We were so glutted by our orgy of orange juice, however, that we quit drinking it for quite a while. During our hiatus, Valencia went out of business, so we never got to reap the fruits of our research. That was my last contact with any Valencia product. I have always wondered what the orange was like.
On 12 May 2015, while poking around in Stop&Shop, my decades of waiting were rewarded when I found a display of Valencia oranges (PLU #93108) and bought a couple. Since they were organic, they were expensive at $1.50 each. (Remember from the e-mail of 9 Dec 2014 that if the PLU code is five digits and the first digit is a 9, then the produce is organic.) The average weight of these two oranges was 9.4 ounces, so their price per pound was a high $2.55.
The Valencia is the main variety of orange grown in California and Texas, and until recently it was the main variety in Florida. Because it is the premier juice orange, one expert says that it "...is considered the world's most important orange."
As for looks, this orange is totally average. It's medium sized and its color is standard orange. Here are pictures of the orange before and after peeling.
I popped a segment of the world's most important orange into my mouth and found that it had almost no taste. I could detect no rush of sweetness when I chomped down, and there was also no tartness. There was only a bland juiciness with a sight undertaste of bitterness. Really, it was not worth waiting 43 years for this. Seeds were not a problem since there were only three big seeds in the entire orange. I gave the Valencia a chance to redeem itself when I tried the second orange, but it was dryer and even worse.
My verdict is that these oranges are not worth eating. Paying stratospheric organic prices for them is a textbook example of money down the drain. At first I thought maybe I was being unfair or had gotten tripped up by a small sample, but then I saw that one expert described this orange by saying, "Not necessarily considered a peeling orange...." I recommend that you juice any Valencia oranges that come your way.
I am thrown into melancholy to find out that this is the only orange that is ripe during the summer
Rick
Appendix: The Enigma of the Origin of the Valencia Orange
I went to Wikipedia to find out about the origin of this orange and found that its name is a fraud. This site says that the orange was a hybrid formed in the mid-19th century by William Wolfskill, who had gotten his start as a fur trapper in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the 1820s. Later he migrated to California, created this hybrid, and in a brilliant stroke of misleading marketing named it the Valencia orange. Valencia and Orange County in California were both named after this orange, but no oranges are now grown in Orange Country due to the high property prices.
To confirm this story, I went to a Purdue site that has been a workhorse for me during my studies of citrus fruits. All it said about the origin of this orange was that it "...may have originated in China."
To find out which of these two versions was correct, I went to a University of Arizona site, which starts a sentence by saying, "Believed to be of Spanish origin..." and ends the same sentence with "...almost certainly of old Portuguese origin." This site epitomizes the confusion that surrounds the origin of this orange in that it can't even stay consistent in the course of a single sentence. (This sentence would be consistent if this orange originated during the period 1580-1640, when Portugal was part of Spain.) Rather than resolving the problem, this site only added to it.
I decided to try another favorite citrus site that is maintained by the University of California at Riverside. It was unhelpful in that all it said was that this orange was imported into the U.S. from the Azores in 1865.
What do I make of this mass of vagueness and inconsistency? The colorful story in Wikipedia has all the earmarks of a hoax. Its only footnote is to the site of a citrus retailer, which does not inspire confidence. I have tried to check out the details in this Wikipedia account and been unable to find confirmation. For example, Wikipedia says that Wolfskill sold his patent to the Irvine Ranch, which then grew vast numbers of oranges. The Wikipedia article on the Irvine Company says that Wolfskill sold land to the Irvine Ranch that he had used to raise sheep; there is no mention of oranges being grown by either party. Prior to this, I have found Wikipedia to be fairly reliable. Another sainted institution bites the dust.
The conclusion is that we don't know where and when the Valencia orange originated. Here is my evidence-free conjecture. Since this orange seems to be so close to the basal orange in size and looks, my guess is that it originated fairly near the beginning of oranges. I place its origin in China more than 2000 years ago. I will quickly abandon this conjecture if anyone comes up with some evidence.
