PHOTOGRAPHS INDIA WHILEY-MORTON BACKGROUNDS POLLYANNA COUPLAND
Does citrus have a season? Yes – although you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. “It’s a winter fruit,” says Franco Fubini, founder of Natoora, supplier of hyper-seasonal produce, “but people have extended the season with modern varieties.”
In the UK winter, citrus come from Spain, Italy and North Africa. “The tradition of Christmas oranges derives from that,” says Catherine Phipps, author of the cookbook Citrus. In our summer, lemons, orange and limes now come from the southern hemisphere, where the seasons are the opposite. Yet, unlike strawberries, which many of us avoid when they ’re imported mid-winter, we tend not to think about seasonality in citrus. “It’s so per vasive,” says Fubini. “We drink gin and tonics or citrus cocktails year round. Orange juice is traded on the Chicago Exchange.” In the kitchen, we view lemon as we do pepper or salt. That has shaped supply and demand on a global scale, with a handful of large companies dominating production and removing seasonality – with the exception of a few lesser-known varieties cultivated on a smaller scale.