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When you think of tropical flavors, what comes to mind? Notes of pineapple, mango, and guava perhaps? Maybe a little passion fruit? Same here.
But imagine if we told you strawberries were also on that list. Would you believe us? With the launch of our NEW Tropical Bliss™ Strawberries, tasting is believing!
We’ll let you in on a little secret: we’ve been developing these beautifully pale and delicate berries for decades now. That’s right, DECADES. Alongside our other specialty strawberries, including our Sweetest Batch™ Strawberries and Rosé Berries™, the NEW Tropical Bliss™ Strawberries are adding a third offering of deliciously unexpected flavor. What is it they say about good things coming in threes?
We recently sat down with our Global Director of Strawberry Breeding, Phil Stewart, and our Sensory Scientist, Kat Phetxumphou, to learn more about the history, the unique challenges, and the incredible flavor profile of the Tropical Bliss™ Strawberry.
As with all of Driscoll’s patented berry varieties, the first focus is always flavor—and the notes and aromas of Tropical Bliss™ really set it apart from the rest. “The pineapple flavor is really prominent, which is a note that I really like,” Phil says with a smile. “And there’s some mango and guava flavors—but to me, it’s the pineapple flavor that really stands out.”
Kat, our Sensory Scientist, concurs. “The flavor is like a refreshing tropical punch on a nice hot day with many tropical fruit flavors, like pineapple, passion fruit, guavas, mangos and some of your citruses,” she says. “It’s a burst of all of these refreshing, effervescent flavors in a single berry.”
Several hundred years ago, two wild strawberry species native to the Americas were transported to a botanical garden in France, where they accidentally cross-pollinated. “These two species don’t typically cross in the wild—they’re from different parts of the continent—but they accidentally hybridized in this French botanical garden,” Phil shared. The result? An unusually pale and fragrant strawberry that eventually became known as the White Carolina variety, and later as the Pineberry—a repurposed descriptive term that is used to describe a white strawberry.
With some help from Mother Nature and good old-fashioned plant breeding, the Driscoll’s Berry Innovators got to work on developing Tropical Bliss™ drawing the best qualities of other varieties such as White Carolina and Rosé Strawberries™. Neither Driscoll’s Rosé Berries™ nor Tropical Bliss™ should be classified as a pineberry because both varieties are distinct and unique proprietary varieties that combine more than 70 years of strawberry breeding expertise. Kat gives us some additional insider info. “According to our panel of flavor experts, other white strawberries that you find in market have different flavor profiles—the flavor profile of Tropical Bliss™ Strawberries is much more complex, intensely tropical in flavor, and ultimately, refreshing.”
Phil assures us, creating the Tropical Bliss™ Strawberry hasn’t been all wine and roses. “We had to overcome a lot of problems with Tropical Bliss™. Because we were going back to material that was barely domesticated, it was really low-yielding, it had a short shelf life, it was susceptible to disease and a lot of malformed fruit. We’ve done an incredible amount of work to overcome and improve these difficulties.”
Believe it or not, we have a whole team of sensory scientists, who have their own panel of 13 consumer flavor experts. “Think of wine sommeliers—but these are berry sommeliers,” Kat says with a smile. “In addition, we have objective sensory science tools to measure the appeal of a berry’s full sensory experience.” One such tool is the new Driscoll’s Strawberry Sensory Wheel™, which helps consumers capture the full sensory spectrum of tasting a strawberry, mapping out taste, texture, mouthfeel, flavor, and aroma.
Kat reiterates her team’s focus on the qualities of a strawberry that make the Driscoll’s eating experience a superior one. “We want to dig into the why—is it flavor, is it texture, is it appearance? Anything you can nit-pick in a berry,” Kat says. “We literally stare at the berries for hours, nit-picking the good and the bad qualities, and I can definitely say the Tropical Bliss™ Strawberries have way more of the positive qualities.”
Still, Tropical Bliss™ is a delicate berry. “It shows bruising a lot easier—every little bit of discoloration is obvious. Every bruise is visible,” Phil says. “And if it sits on plastic, it gets a little yellow spot where moisture accumulates—but it doesn’t affect the quality or flavor at all.”
Finicky qualities aside, Phil continues to be bowled over by the berry’s intoxicating aroma. “I’m always impressed when I’ve got a crate of Tropical Bliss™ Strawberries in my car and I leave for a couple of minutes. When I come back, the perfume and the aroma of the berries has basically transported my car to a tropical island!” he says.
In addition to the flavor and aromas of the Tropical Bliss™ Strawberry, their visual appeal is also important. Kat explains, “People tend to eat with their eyes, so if what they’re eating doesn’t have a vibrant color to it, they may associate that with a lack of flavor—but with the Tropical Bliss™ Strawberry, it’s quite the opposite, and that’s what makes it so exciting. It’s unexpected.”
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