Summer Ephemerals

Driven by our relationships with Omar Fugaro, The Farm Between, Champlain Orchards and the farms of Columbia County, 3 hours south of us, these flavors flash in on the whims of weather.

gooseberriesharsh-square.jpg

While chipmunks always sit poised to destroy a just-ripe gooseberry crop overnight, the annual fruit cycle is way less predictable. It’s not just the fruit that morphs. It’s the people too. This year Omar closed the u-pick on his Black Raspberries. For the first time ever, we have all the black raspberries we want.

DRIPPY DARK BERRIES

The essence of summer, this is a romantic category. July fruit, sweetness, stains, tart.

STONE FRUIT LUXURY

Stately apricots, peaches, plums and nectarines start in June but rush August with soft body, a mellowness, dare I even say, a languor to them. Paradoxical, I think of stone fruit, peaches, and apricots especially, as total diva fruit. We love them, we need them, they (and their sultriness) never stay long enough.

THE GOOSEBERRY & THEIR ELDERS

Since moving home to Vermont and meeting Omar Fugaro and building flavors around his fruit, I’ve come to know a wide range of gooseberry varieties, which are generally thorny fruit, but wildly versatile for flavor composition, inviting citrus, spices and flowers as companions. Moody elderberries taste like wine and behave like a ship’s ballast inside a jam flavor; deep, deep earthy balance. They demand a candle-lit table, a wedge of aged cheese, a goblet of mead.