A Berry Named Marion

Oregon Growers makes a spread worth spooning!

Circa 1956, George F. Waldo developed a new blackberry named Marion after the county in which it was extensively tested. The harvest timing placed it between the Boysen (early) and the Thornless Evergreen (late), two existing varieties of blackberry. The Marion yielded superior fruit, was earlier in fruition than the Evergreen, and with a thicker cane, was easier to train, resulting in the ability to reduce the number of canes, producing more fruit on more branches (and fewer canes).

It was created by taking the native Oregon trailing blackberry, Rubus macropetalus Dougl, and crossing it with Chehalem X Olallie circa 1945. It was then selected in 1948 and tested until released as Marion in 1956.

The result is this: some 58 years later (It takes time to create good, and proving age doesn’t have to be bad!), Oregon Growers Marionberry all-natural fruit spread is the bomb!

(With full disclosure, we totally love the Oregon Growers Marionberry Fruit Spread, so our review is biased.)

Take off the top, the lid, if you will, and dig in to gather a full spoonful, and you will enjoy a richness of full-flavored, very-berry taste. We stop short of calling it creamy (not so appealing a word when describing a fruit spread), but it has an enveloping, rich mouthfeel that touches the outer edges of your tongue like a fine Cabernet. You wish all fruit-based jams would be like this.

A whiff after tasting from the jar (or your second spoonful) smells like a very, very blueberry.

The combination of the guilty fruity spread placed atop butter is a very important test, and one I take very seriously. It is perfection as it allows the toast to crunch, the butter to blend, and the fruit to spread with flavor.

If we had to choose, we like it cold; very, very cold. But that’s not to say we are not going to be ecstatically happy when we have a peanut butter and Marionberry sandwich! The combination of berry tasty and not too sweet is just the right balance to stand up to peanut butter without dominating in a bite.

ingredients 
marionberries, cane sugar, pectin, citric acid