The Worlds Most Sought After Dried Fruit
Baking delicious fruit filled sourdough teacakes is a passion of mine, but you can never stop improving and refining. This month I decided to look for the most expensive dried fruit on the market. I discovered that, like any ingredient, the best only comes from a few select regions, each one renowned for their growing and harvesting.
Currants from Greece
Any bag of currents you buy are made from a dark, seedless grape known as the Corinth Grape (where we get “current” from). Corinth Grapes come in many varieties and grow in many different regions, however, some big names in the cake industry will only use one. The folks at Eccles Cakes, for example, only use a Corinth grape named after an ancient village in a mountainous region of Greece that is said to have the perfect environment for their unique flavour.
Vostizza, now called Aigialeia, is a town in Western Greece surrounded by hills. While most of the world's currants are produced in the Western part of the country, it is only in the hills surrounding Aigialeia that the juiciest Corinth grapes will grow. The much sought “Vostizza” Grape has held its own as the best crop for currant making since the 13th century.
Vostizza Raisins
Vrosthena, a Greek family business who cultivate Vostizzas dry their currants naturally, “under the life-giving sun” and think of Vostizzas as “an excellent food for man, a true energy currency”. Eccles Cakes give a special mention to the Vostizza, “Drying is carried out in the traditional manner by alternate periods exposed to hot sun and the shade. It is thought that the slowness of this process imparts such exquisite flavour to the Vostizza Currant.”
So if you want a high end bag of currents, make sure you get vostizzas. They are of such good quality that the European Union cites the region they come from, Aeghion, as a “Designated Protection of Origin”
Sultanas from Turkey
People eat jumbo golden raisins and they think they are enjoying a bag of “sultanas.” But in fact these imposters are chemically treated to look shinier than their authentic cousins, which has allowed them to take the lead in the dried fruit market. True sultanas are smaller and less sweet, but they have a more sophisticated flavour and are a product more natural than any “golden raisin”.
The “Sultana Grape” is a green, seedless grape from Asia Minor. It is known by many names, and harvested in different shapes and sizes around the world. In the US they have the smallest version called the “Thompson Seedless” thought to be the world's most popular table grape. In the UK where the Thompson Seedless is descended from we call them “Lady de Coverly” Grapes and in the Middle East and India; “Kishmish” grapes.
Turkey, however is their country of origin, and you’ll find many sultana grape vineyards around Izmir, Turkey’s third most populous city. This Grape is known as the İzmir üzümü (grape of İzmir) and has been exported to the West since the Elizabethan period. It was given the name “Sultana '' as the feminine derivative of “Sultan” meaning powerful.
Karaot Village Natural Products is a strictly organic, traditional cultivator of İzmir üzümü sultanas. The whole village of Karoat are working together to grow figs and olives, bay leaves, mountain thyme and many more products native to Asia Minor and the Mediterranean. Their sultanas are dried slowly from grapes grown in the surrounding mountains and are never handled by a machine, not even a vehicle.
Sultanas from Karoat Village Natural Products
Usually irrigation is used to increase the yield of grapes, but not by Karoat Village. To quote them, their grapes “get all their efficiency from the rain. This gives it a wonderful aroma and taste.” İzmir üzümü Sultanas from Karoat Village are £2.17 for a Kilo, but you have to pay extra for shipping to the UK. You also have to pick through the pieces of stalk left by their vines, as the farmers interfere so little with the natural process of drying that even the stalks are not cleared from the product.
Raisins from Spain
I’ve never experienced a wine with “the intense lift of muscat raisins” But to makers of fine wines, getting the “nose” of your chardonnay to even smell like these raisins is a serious achievement.
Originating in Malaga and Valencia, the muscat grape has been dried and sold to cooks and bakers as raisins since the Phoenicians planted its ancestor, the Egyptian Vitis Vinifera during their conquest of Spain. Sweet, meaty, and dark, they make the perfect raisins and are larger in size than American Thompson Seedless, the most readily available raisin on the market. The steps required until ripe muscats are finally ready for a teacake are numerous and often dangerous.
Muscat raisins are dried and processed using modern methods in some parts of the world, but in Antequera they’re doing it all by hand, and drying them with the sun. Drying takes around four weeks, but to even get the grapes to the paseros (drying farms) you need to collect them.
Visit farms around Antequera between August and September and you’ll see workers climbing hills with wooden boxes and knives to collect the low hanging muscats, so heavy they are nearly touching the ground. Once filled, the boxes are carried by donkey down the hill to a pasero, where they are placed with the utmost care on the ground to dry. Over four weeks, if protected from rain, the grapes will lose 70% of their moisture.
Muscat Raisins, dried and ready to be picked
You’d think separating these masses of raisins from their stalks would be left to a machine. Well in Malaga it is done by hand. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, the traditional, old fashioned method to produce these superior raisins “...represents a traditional way of life that identifies the area with the culture associated with raisin production.” The same article published by the FAO points to the “spirit of the region” being enhanced by these long and challenging farming methods. Besides, no vehicle could climb slopes around Antequera, some of which are at a 60% incline.
Why aren’t muscat grapes used in wine making? In some instances they are, but the muscat grape contains such a high concentration of sugar, that cultivators prefer to use them for raisins. If you try a wine made with the muscat grape, you’ll definitely get that “intense lift”.
Buy Wholefoods Online offer muscat Raisins at an astonishing £8.42 a kilo. My sourdough teacakes contain currants, raisins and sultanas, along with cranberries, cinnamon and mincemeat, and like the muscat raisin, they take a long time to prepare. To order six of my teacakes please allow two days of preparation. I can assure you they are worth the wait.
Sources:
Arad Branding, (2022), Jumbo Golden Raisins Vs Sultanas Price, (online). Available at: https://aradbranding.com/en/jumbo-golden-raisins-vs-sultanas-price/
Natures Produce (2022), Thompson Grapes, (online), Available at: https://naturesproduce.com/encyclopedia/thompson-grapes/
Karoat Village Natural Products, (2022), Raisins, (online), Available at: https://organigiz.org/urun/kuru-uzum/
Cooks Info (2022), Muscat Raisins, (online), Available at: https://www.cooksinfo.com/muscat-raisins
Antequera, (2022), Malaga Raisins, (online), Available at https://www.antequera.co.uk/malaga-raisins/#
FAO, (2022), Malaga Raisin Production System in La Axarquía, Spain, (online), Available at https://www.fao.org/giahs/giahsaroundtheworld/designated-sites/europe-and-central-asia/malaga-raisin-production-system-in-la-axarquia/es/