This complex hybrid half plum half apricot is perhaps the most elusive of stone fruits.
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Fresh Stuff: What is a pluot?
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Even during peak stone fruit season—which is now *checks the calendar*!—it’s nearly impossible to find a juicy perfectly ripe plum-apricot-peach or nectarine. While these fruits are synonymous with the hot calm days of mid- to late-summer their inconsistency gives them an almost elusive quality. There’s one stone fruit however that’s particularly elusive: the pluot. Half plum and half apricot (with a Seussian portmanteau of a name) this hybrid fruit was bred to offer the best of both worlds. It has the skin flesh and flavor of a plum and the sweetness of an apricot but is in a class of its own. “To this day [pluots] are the most incredible fruit I’ve ever had” Tom Grazdiel a geneticist and professor in the UC Davis Department of Botany tells me noting that their novel flavor and highly selective breeding make the pluot particularly interesting. “These are fruits that have been developed by breaking the rules” he says. But what exactly is a pluot and how can you track one down?
A pluot is a hybrid between a plum and an apricot. What sets a pluot apart from other plum and apricot hybrids like apriums and plumcots is that it has more plum characteristics than apricots. They’re often described as being about 75 percent plum and 25 percent apricot but the genetic makeup of a pluot isn’t quite that simple Grazdiel says and some pluot varieties can actually have more plum ancestry in their genes. To him a pluot “showcases the best of both plum and apricot” — meaning it has the complex flavor of a plum but its tannic skin is balanced by the sweet honeyed notes of an apricot and its flesh is juicy but still firm.
