08/29/2026
This may be a video for the diehards—and especially for professional nursery people who want to understand what complex fruit flavor really means.
I put two outstanding, numbered interspecific hybrids from Zaiger Genetics in front of five different groups of nursery and horticultural professionals. Both are exceptional fruits, but neither fits neatly into the usual descriptions of fruit flavor.
We often describe fruit as sweet, sub-acid, or acid/sugar balanced. But there is another level of flavor that I call complex.
Complex flavor starts beyond that familiar acid-sugar balance. It can have considerable sweetness, but it isn't simply a highly sweet sub-acid fruit—and it isn't acid-dominant either. It has a depth of flavor that can make it surprisingly difficult to judge.
So I gave the professionals a simple challenge:
Which of these two outstanding fruits is the sweetest?
I visited five different groups, and their reactions to the same two fruits were remarkably different.
This is an eight-minute-deep dive, so it may be one for the fruit and nursery diehards. But if you want to see what happens when experienced professionals encounter truly complex fruit flavor, stay with it to the end.
You may be surprised by what they taste—and by what they don't.
