The legendary mangosteen—that sweet, creamy, fragrant orb that fruit connoisseurs tell their children bedtime stories about—has long been barred from entering the United States for fear of insect stowaways. It’s hard to grow here, too, so U.S. fruit fanciers have generally been out of luck if they wanted to sample it.
But a quixotic grower in Puerto Rico has succeeded in coaxing his mangosteen trees to bear fruit, and the first commercial crop has been arriving in gourmet grocery stores in New York and Los Angeles. The Panoramic Fruit Company is the project of a Connecticut private investor with a BA in agriculture, Ian Crown, who just over a decade ago bought a farm in the hills of Puerto Rico and planted it with wholly impractical Asian fruits like longan, rambutan, and mangosteen. Mangosteen’s very difficult to graft, and by seed it takes 8 to 10 years to produce fruit—if it bothers to at all. It’s not really something you grow. It’s something you conjure.
So when the pastry chef at Spago Beverly Hills got a sample of Crown’s fruit last year, she said, as quoted in a profile of Crown in the New York Times, “This is like seeing a unicorn.”
That might explain why in a few grocery stores in New York City, the price for a single mangosteen has been $12 to $15. After all, how much would you pay for a unicorn? Crown had anticipated this fervor of fruit lust. In the New York Times last year, he’d said, “I’m mulling going into hiding.” Now that the mangosteens are on the market (and with his distributors), Crown has had to plaintively spell out his situation on his website (warning: The following quote may upset our more sensitive fruit-loving readers):
The mangosteen are sold out indefinitely. I continue to receive emails about the supply and would ask everyone reading this to know that no one is sorrier than I am that there is no extra fruit beyond my current commitments. None. I have no mangosteen available for sale in 2007, 2008 and possibly ever.
Meanwhile, for those of us with a smaller monthly fruit budget, the FDA has formally approved the shipment of irradiated mangosteens and other fruits from Thailand. The mangosteens should arrive sometime in September, and we’ll be here covering their breathlessly food-blogged reception.
I believe many of you out there are craving this exotic, luscious tasting fruit known as the Mangosteen right… I may have a very possible and reasonable solution to this existing problem… You see, my partner (living in New York) and I (living in Thailand) have just started up a Mangosteen export company based in Bangkok, Thailand.
Our company (Queensteen Co., Ltd.) simply provides high quality; grade A, fresh Mangosteen Fruit for absolutely anyone out there whom may be interested. Our fresh Mangosteen fruits are grown organically but have to be irradiated in order to legally import them into the USA. Radiation is not lethal or harmful to the human body in any way. We guarantee that. It is a myth when one says “Irradiation destroys the nutritional content of the food. Irradiated foods taste ‘different’”. This is simply a false statement. All food preservation processes affect nutritional content. The FOOD and DRUG ADMINISTRATION has concluded that nutritional losses are insignificant. Hence, it’s definitely safe for those who are concerned.
If any of you are interested in purchasing fresh Mangosteen fruit or know of buyers that may be interested, feel free to contact me for further details regarding price, quantity, payments etc.
Amornchai.s@gmail.com
Cell contact: 6681 371 7069
Amornchai Sachdev