2000s Archive

Orchard of Dreams

Originally Published July 2005
With 250 varieties, Andy Mariani’s Orchard of stone fruit is part lost world, part future world, and altogether different.

In 1969, when Andy Mariani was 23 years old, he was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease. “Take him home,” the doctors told his parents. “He’s going to die.”

Perhaps farmers, like fruit, develop best under difficult conditions. Today, Mariani’s fruit farm in a fertile corner of Central California—which he grew amid crippling trials that continue to plague him—is considered by many to be the finest in the nation.

In late spring he might have 35 kinds of cherries for his visitors to taste. There are huge, firm Bings and sugary Rainiers so ripe their skins are solid red; Black Tartarians, Mariani’s favorites, small and soft, with a subtle blackberry flavor; Black Republicans, dark, winy, and concentrated, with a hint of bitter almond; and Coe’s Transparents, dainty pale-salmon fruits that reveal their stones when held up to the light.

In late July or early August, Mariani harvests his signature peach, the Baby Crawford, with its deep orange-yellow skin and unmatched intensity of flavor. (Mariani salvaged it from a university breeder’s reject pile; today there is a waiting list of customers eager for it.) He also delights in showing off a few genuine heirlooms, like the Pallas, an oval-shaped honey peach with exquisitely juicy and tender white flesh, which originated in Georgia in 1878.

White-fleshed peaches and nectarines with the traditional balance of sweetness and acidity are hard to find in stores because they are so delicate that each touch leaves a fingerprint. But Mariani grows a prime example, the Silver Logan, which has a fruity vanilla aroma, dense, buttery flesh, and a complex, well-balanced, lingering flavor.

For Mariani, this all represents a return to his youth. In the mid-’40s, when he was born in San Jose, cherry, apricot, and prune orchards blanketed the surrounding Santa Clara Valley, which was known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight. Mariani’s own family had 18 acres planted with apricots and prunes, and though his Yugoslavian-immigrant father worked as a commercial fisherman, his dad’s real passion was for the land.

Growing up, Mariani adored working on the farm, but because family tradition dictated that the business be handed down to the eldest son, he earned a master’s degree in public administration and then took a position as assistant manager for the City of Saratoga. He had already been diagnosed with his autoimmune disease at that point, and hoped the job would help him cope.

Unwilling to accept the doctors’ death sentence, the Marianis sent their son off to Vienna, to a doctor known for his unconventional techniques—an aggressive combination of corticosteroids, antibiotics, and dermatological surgery. Over the course of the next nine years, Mariani made several trips to Europe, and by 1981 he was surviving without medication. That year he turned 36, and his disease went into remission, where it has remained ever since.

During his ordeal, Mariani returned to the family farm. Having a near-death experience, he says, made him focus on what was really important—and he decided that for him it was working the land. Though his excruciating pain prevented him from putting in a full day’s work in the orchards, he would labor for hours over a small garden. “I went down to the basics,” he says, “growing tomatoes and flowers. It was therapy farming.”

He also took horticulture classes and schooled himself in soils and irrigation, and before long he was introducing exotic fruit varieties into the orchard. Eventually, Mariani was able to go to work on the horticultural aspects of the family business, Mariani Orchards, while his older brother Mitch handled marketing and finances. For two decades, the two managed to withstand the economic pressures that forced so many of their peers to sell to developers as the Valley of Heart’s Delight turned into Silicon Valley.

Morgan Hill, where Andy Mariani lives, enjoys an ideal climate for growing stone fruit. Daytime highs in the summer average 87 degrees, warm enough to ripen the fruit but not so hot that photosynthesis shuts down (as often happens in the broiling Central Valley, where most of the nation’s stone fruit is grown), and nights are cool enough for the trees to respire, allowing the fruit to stay on the tree longer and develop a fuller flavor.

But climate can only take fruit so far; the rest is up to the farmer. The affable Mariani, who is today as tall and sturdy as one of his trees, says that over the years he’s developed “a certain feel for the land, for what it can and cannot do. There are decisions that you make on a day-to-day basis to create much better fruit.” Mariani insists on picking all of his fruit truly tree ripe. He harvests each variety five to seven times a season (versus two for commercial growers), and by picking daily, in small quantities, is usually able to avoid refrigeration, which dulls the flavor of most stone fruit. Growing in small batches also enables Mariani to personally supervise his veteran crew in the countless decisions that create great fruit, giving instructions for the pruning, thinning, and irrigation of each variety.

Widely regarded as a horticultural wizard, Mariani is as well versed in the latest scientific discoveries as he is in classic pomological literature. “If there’s anybody more knowledgeable, I don’t know where he is,” says Charlie Olson, a local grower and a longtime friend of Mariani’s. “Andy lives, breathes, and talks fruit.”

Unfortunately, Mariani has had to concern himself with more than just fruit. By the time he’d got his health under control, there were other problems to contend with. His brother gained financial control of the farm in 1979, and over time their relationship became tense. In early 2003, Mariani was cut adrift from the family business altogether. “He was totally lost,” says Olson.

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