SOURCE: Josh Rubin, Toronto Star
Would you pay $90 for a pineapple?
Maui Gold pineapples — prized by aficionados for their sweetness, as well as notes of coconut and mango — are now available in Canada, couriered directly from the farm in Hawaii to your front door.
The farm announced this week that it was expanding delivery to fans in Canada, adding that 10 per cent of all pineapple sales will go toward efforts to help Maui recover from deadly wildfires this summer.
“We know that our friends in Canada want to support Maui, and want to support Maui agriculture,” said Tambara Garrick, chief marketing officer of Maui Gold, in an interview from the farm in Makawao, Hawaii, on the slopes of the Haleakala volcano. “We’ve had so many people begging and asking — whether it’s via Instagram, emails or calling us — to have Maui Gold come to Canada.”
The pineapple will be on your doorstep within two or three days after it’s picked, with shipping via UPS air freight. Options include a single pineapple for $90, a two-pack for $100 and a 25-pound case (which features seven or eight pineapples) for $200, which would put the price per pineapple as low as $25.
Garrick acknowledges that it’s a steep price for the uber-premium fruit, even though it includes shipping.
“We do realize that it’s expensive,” said Garrick. “We are working with our shipping partners to bring that cost down.”
Maui Gold is a more poetic moniker than MD1, 7350 or CO2, the variety’s technical names when it was developed in the 1970s. While some MD1 is planted elsewhere in the world, the warm days, cool nights and volcanic soil of Haleakala mean it thrives in Maui like nowhere else, said Darren Strand, Maui Gold’s director of agriculture.
“They really are location-specific. When you try to grow this variety at lower elevations and higher temperatures … it doesn’t ripen and flavour up the same way it would here,” said Strand. “We think about it very similarly to how a lot of vineyards think of their farming too. That’s the same way we approach what we do.”
“It has to grow on the slopes of Haleakala to be a Maui Gold,” added Garrick.
Sending the prized pineapples directly via air freight allows them to be picked at the height of ripeness, said Strand.
That’s not the case, he said, with typical “commodity” pineapples, which usually take two weeks to get from a farm to a store shelf.
“They’re definitely harvesting them before their peak ripeness. And pineapples aren’t like a banana or an avocado where it’ll ripen after harvesting. It only starts to degrade,” said Strand.
The typical pineapple found on Canadian store shelves is the unpoetically named MD2, which dominates the world pineapple export market. The MD2 is especially prominent in North American pineapple sales, with an estimated 99 per cent market share, said William Cavan, executive director of the International Pineapple Organization.
“If you put the two of them in front of me side by side, I’d take the Maui Gold every time,” said Cavan. “It’s a beautiful fruit. There’s almost no acidity, and it’s so sweet. It’s delicious.”
MD2 pineapples found on the shelves of your local grocer or fruit and vegetable stand are typically anywhere from 10 to 12 on the Brix sweetness scale. Maui Gold doesn’t get picked until it’s somewhere between 14 and 16 Brix.
If it’s so delicious, why isn’t it more widely grown? Partly because the variety thrives better in some locations. But also, said Cavan, because pineapple sent via sea or land needs to last a lot longer before it hits the shelves, Cavan said.
“Taste isn’t the only consideration for the big companies,” said Cavan. “The more sugar there is, the less it’s able to stand transportation.”
Despite the alluring flavour of the prized fruit, Cavan said it’s not something he’d be willing to shell out big bucks for.
“I mean, would I buy one for that price when I can get a regular pineapple for three bucks? Not a chance. And we’re on the verge of a recession,” said Cavan. “I don’t know how many people there are who could afford that much.”
Veteran Toronto-area produce wholesaler Steve Bamford, president of Bamford Produce Co., expressed surprised at the hefty price tag.
“Wow. How many rich people want to part with that much money will be interesting to see,” said Bamford, noting that in the mid-’90s, some Hawaiian producers briefly experimented with sending their pineapples here via air freight.
“Air freight is expensive. I’m sure those pineapples will be very good, but whether they’re worth the difference in price? That’s up to each individual to decide,” said Bamford.