Sweet-tart specialty citrus attracts steady demand

If you've never tasted or even heard of a calamondin, you're not alone. Of the many varieties of specialty citrus grown in California, calamondins are among the least known.

But in the Philippines, where it's called calamansi or calamonding, the small fruit is ubiquitous. Puckeringly sour, the juice is used to add acid to dishes, to balance and build the complexity of flavors.

The Philippines is the world's top producer of calamondins. But thanks to a growing population of Filipino American residents in California, and rising interest in Filipino cuisine in the U.S., calamondins have begun to gain ground here both as an ingredient and a crop.

"It's more mainstream than you think," said Destiny Marquez, who handles the business side of Pearson Ranch, a grower and online retailer of citrus in Porterville. Pearson Ranch grows oranges and partners with other farmers to offer a variety of specialty citrus to its mail-order customers.

Marquez said she's seen modest but steady, year-round demand for calamondins from customers all over the country, most often for making preserves or eating fresh. Increased visibility of specialty citrus on cooking shows and in grocery stores, bars and restaurants has piqued consumers' interest, she said.

"People get excited because they're able to try these new things and they love it," she said. "I think that as America's palate becomes more educated, that's just not going to go away."

For Arlen Miller, who grows the calamondins Marquez sells, capitalizing on the rising interest in specialty citrus helped his 70-year-old family farm diversify.

"Anything that you can produce that you don't have a lot of competition at is more resistant to overproduction," he said.

He began planting specialty citrus varieties about 10 years ago on a portion of his 600 acres in Orosi. In addition to navel and Valencia oranges, lemons and mandarins, he now grows about eight specialty varieties, including Buddha's hand citrons, Tahitian pummelos, variegated pink lemons, Australian finger limes, mandarinquats, limequats and calamondins.

Diversifying his crop portfolio has offered some degree of protection from unpredictable price fluctuations, he said.

"(Last year) the returns that we had on our specialties were consistent from the year before," he said. "They didn't necessarily go down like our regular navels and lemons and mandarins went down. So that was very, very nice."

Growing calamondins is a little different from other citrus, Miller said. Unlike oranges, which blossom once in the spring, calamondin trees bloom and set fruit three to four times a year. That means blossoms, immature fruit and mature fruit are all on the tree at the same time.

In the Philippines, the fruits are harvested and used when small, green and immature. In California, they're more commonly harvested when orange and fully ripe, as Miller does.

The tree becomes quite laden with fruit, Miller said, which can take up to a year to mature on the tree. This provides more risk that overripe fruit can decay and infect new fruit, so calamondins require additional applications of fungicides compared to other citrus trees, he said.

In addition to partnering with Pearson Ranch, Miller sells his specialty varieties directly to customers at the farm's fruit stand, via its Facebook page, The Big Orange. He also sells fruit through a wholesaler, which is helping to educate buyers about unfamiliar varieties and develop a slowly growing market.

The calamondin is believed to be a natural cross of kumquat and mandarin orange, possibly native to China. It was introduced to the United States in about 1900. Because it blooms and bears fruit year-round, the calamondin is a popular ornamental citrus and the most commonly sold potted citrus in the U.S.

The fruits retain the highly aromatic rind of their kumquat parentage, which is sweet and edible when fully ripe. The fruit's flavor, with floral and medicinal notes, is more complex, softer and slightly sweeter than that of lemons.

"It's a small fruit, but it's packed with flavor," said chef Roline Casper, who grew up in the Philippines. She's owned Roline's Uniquely Filipino, a casual eatery in Vacaville serving traditional, homestyle Filipino food, for 10 years.

"Almost everything that we eat, we always have a dipping sauce with calamansi, fish sauce and soy sauce," she said.

A squeeze of the juice also goes into marinades, brightens saucy dishes, and finishes plates of noodles or rice porridge in her eatery.

Interest in Filipino food in the U.S. is on the rise, and food writers have been labeling Filipino the next "It" cuisine for years. Popular new restaurants run by young Filipino American chefs offer modern takes on traditional dishes and court a diverse clientele.

And the calamondins that so often accompany the cuisine are also gaining notice from new admirers. The Washington Post included calamansi juice in its 2019 list of trending flavors. Food blogs abound with recipes using the citrus, such as pie, cake, cookies, cocktails, marmalade and fish dishes.

But the growing demand hasn't yet kept up with the supply of fruit Miller's 350 calamondin trees pump out.

"We're producing right now more fruit than we can sell," he said.

Despite an increase in visibility in recent years, calamondins remain unfamiliar to most people. Miller would love for more customers to discover them, as well as the other specialty varieties he grows.

The constant challenge of providing for his customers' needs and finding the optimum method for growing the best fruit is what makes farming rewarding for him, he said.

"We want to get the biggest sizes that are marketable, the sweetest fruit, varieties that people enjoy eating. It's not easy to find all those things," Miller said. "Every year, I get another chance to do it better than I did last year."

(Shannon Springmeyer is assistant editor of California Bountiful magazine, which published a version of this story in its November-December issue. She may be contacted at sspringmeyer@cfbf.com.)