FEATURED FRUIT: Royal Riviera® Pears
Legendary Royal Riviera® Pears are now shipping. Our founders, Harry and David, called these pears “so big and juicy, you eat them with a spoon®.” That was over 80 years ago, when the brothers started selling Southern Oregon-grown Royal Riviera® Pears as gourmet gifts.
These special pears are delicate and require warm days and cool nights to grow, making the Rogue Valley ideal for cultivating this famous fruit. The sweet flavor, buttery texture, and extreme juiciness of our Royal Riviera® Pears are what make them so delicious. Every one is handpicked and packed to arrive at your door in perfect condition.
NOW HAPPENING IN THE ORCHARDS
Our Royal Riviera® Pear harvest continues. These pears will be processed and placed in cold storage for thirty days to ensure that the sugars develop and they ripen perfectly for delivery to our customers. Shipping should begin during the first week of October.
Harvest Information
Juicy and delicious Royal Riviera® Pears are now shipping.
Honey Tangerines from Chile will ship in October. The winds of Hurricane Irma blew a lot of developing citrus fruit off the trees in Florida, which means harvest quantities will be lower than last year. We recommend ordering citrus early. We still anticipate being able to ship Florida Indian River grapefruit in November, Florida Sugar Belles and SolZest® Mandarins in December, and Florida HoneyBells in January.
We are now shipping Gala and Jonagold apples grown in Washington.
Asian pears grown in Pennsylvania are now shipping.
Orchard Facts
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How do your orchardists ensure your pears are all ripe when they arrive, even when the weather is different from year to year?
Because pears require cold weather to become sweet, our orchardists pick each pear the moment it ripens, after which we place them in cold storage for up to 30 days. This ensures that every pear in your box will arrive within a day or two of being ready to eat.
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How do you get great pears all year round?
We work with growers in multiple parts of the world to ensure that we have access to the right climate to grow top-quality Comice pears all year. Our orchardists fly out to Chile and New Zealand to inspect the pears we select, and we fly orchardists from those countries here to train them so they can provide pears that meet our standards.
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When does your pear crop ripen?
Depending on the year, our pears can ripen anywhere from the second week of August to mid-September. The cooler the growing season is, the faster our pears ripen.
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When does your peach crop ripen?
Our peaches ripen from the beginning of July into August while the weather’s warm. Unlike pears, peaches ripen faster in warm weather. If we get a cooler fall season, this means the peach crop and pear harvest will sometimes run together.
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How do you make sure the best fruit gets into your gifts?
Every peach and pear (the two fruits we grow in our own orchards) is picked by hand sorted in the field. We then use a machine to take 17 pictures and sort them again to weed out imperfections, and finally, before packing, each piece of fruit is looked at one more time, by hand, to ensure only the highest-quality fruit is shipped.
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How much fruit do you grow each year?
We grow about 400 tons of Oregold® Peaches, 15,500 tons of Royal Riviera® Pears, and 800 tons of Bosc pears. The total harvest varies based on weather conditions throughout the year.
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Where do you grow your apples?
The majority of the apples we sell come from quality growers in Washington, since Washington apples are high quality and can be shipped everywhere in the U.S. From March to July, when apples aren’t in season there, we send our orchardists and merchants to New Zealand, which shares similar climate characteristics to the U.S. Pacific Northwest in many areas.
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Where do your Cherry-Oh!® Cherries come from?
We select growers in specific areas for our cherries—near lakes and cool river valleys—so the cherries are plump and extremely sweet. Those areas are Hood River in Oregon, Lake Wenatchee and Lake Chelan in Washington, and Okanagan Lake in British Columbia.
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What’s a fun fact about a fruit that most people don’t know?
In order to turn orange, citrus fruit needs the cold. When temperatures are too warm at night, oranges, HoneyBells, and other fruit will stay green—even though they’re perfectly sweet and delicious. They just don’t take on that beautiful orange hue.
