Placer County mandarin crop comes back 'heavy, strong'

Josh Huntsinger did his senior project at Cal Poly on the characteristics and maturity of the Owari Satsuma mandarin, so it's safe to say Placer County's director of agriculture can peel off a fact or two about the beloved crop. "I spent quite a bit of time in the laboratory actually looking at the science and chemistry of this piece of fruit, and over the course of a season how these things change and develop and mature," he told the Auburn Journal. As icing on a mandarin cake, Huntsinger has been a judge in the best mandarin contest for most of the last 15 years at the annual Mountain Mandarin Festival. So when he says this season will yield a "heavy, strong crop," you can bet a mandarin milkshake he's right. Huntsinger explained that in years with a light fruit crop, as were the last couple of years, trees are able to store considerable nutrients and have a rest and recovery year. A heavy crop is the typical result the next year. With the 33rd annual Mountain Mandarin Festival scheduled for Friday through Sunday, Nov. 20-22, Huntsinger said, "There have been plenty of years where we're biting our nails going, 'Oh my gosh, are we going to have ripe fruit for the Mandarin Festival?' This year, it's like no problem. I'm seeing on social media a lot of our mandarin growers are already starting to sell fruit, so that's a really good sign." Mandarin Hill Orchards in Penryn is the biggest (20 acres) and oldest mandarin ranch in Placer County. The parents of owner Tom Aguilar purchased the property in 1943. Mandarin Hill is among the early sellers this season. A few customers went out in Tuesday afternoon's drizzle to buy bags of mandarins. A van from Washington, which makes a weekly trip down to Auburn, was heading home after loading up with mandarins. "Because it's a heavy crop this year, the fruit's gonna be small. A lot of people don't understand that," said Mandarin Hill owner Tom Aguilar. "At the beginning of the season, the small fruit gets ripe first." It's also more flavorful and less sweet, according to Huntsinger, who explained mandarins are high in acid and low in sugar early in the season. The oranges go from a high-acid low-sugar state when they're less ripe to high sugar and low acid as they mature. "Think of acid as flavor and sugar as sweetness," Huntsinger said. "Then at the peak of the season, when I think most people go, 'Oh my gosh, this is the best fruit I've ever eaten,' that's when you have relatively both high acid and high sugar. Later on in the season, we get to a high-sugar low-acid piece of fruit that might be really sweet but it's kind of a flat fruit with a lot less flavor." The color of the fruit is also light early in the season and dark orange later, Huntsinger said. The standard season runs from now until February. Huntsinger says because Placer County's mandarin crop is grown in its foothills, each ranch has different characteristics and soil, as opposed to fruit grown down in the valley. Some hills face the south, others southeast and still others southwest. Some are flat and others steeper. "Each mandarin ranch has its own microclimate," he said. "So combined with the soil and the way the mandarin farmer actually does his farming practices, that contributes to a different piece of fruit for every single ranch. And it's amazing how much variety there is. You can't use blanket statements for the quality or the maturity level of Placer County's mandarins just because there are so many ranches." Huntsinger said there are roughly 90 mandarin growers in Placer County – from south of Loomis to Granite Bay, up into Auburn, over to Lincoln and toward the American River to the east – and each is unique. Says Huntsinger, "When we do the best mandarin contest at the festival, it's typically 16 to 18 of our largest growers, and we have 16 to 18 very different pieces of fruit we get to judge from."