Summertime means picnics, BBQs, potlucks, and parties. Mealtimes will see more refreshing options with bright, fun flavors to balance the summer heat. Northwest Naturals is here to help your business stay on the trends and make your flavor goals a reality, which can mean utilizing fruits that are in season. Summer is the season for apples, apricots, blackberries, blueberries, cherries, lemons, mangoes, and more. We love them all, but we will focus on four of our favorites: peaches, strawberries, watermelon, and plums! Read below for all the juicy details on each fruit and application inspiration you can use to inspire future products.
- Peach
Peaches are known for their sweet, juicy, and sometimes sour flavors that deliver antioxidants. Their delicious subtlety is versatile for any industry, from desserts to cocktails.
China remains the largest peach producer, while the United States provides 1/4 of the total supply worldwide. Northwest Naturals sources our peaches from California which, in part, is why our Peach Juice Concentrate is one of our most popular products. We also suspect it may be because of its buildable taste that blends nicely with more potent flavors such as mango, apricot, and even botanical and herbal flavors.
The harvest time for all these California peaches begins in late June and runs through mid-September, however our products are available year-round.
Application Inspiration
The peach and herbal pairing has become a trending flavor combo, especially in the hard seltzer industry. Other popular flavors are peach tea, peach and ginger, peach and apricot, and peach pie. Any of these combinations could work deliciously in confections and cocktails. For savory applications, peaches can be used fresh, sautéed, baked, or grilled! Create peach chutney, spicy peach salsa, or savory tarts baked with herbs, like basil and cheese, like ricotta. Let your creativity fly!
For example, our team enjoyed testing various applications and experimented with our Peach marshmallow recipe, which turned out delicious! Check out our recipe here, and try it for yourself.
Request a sample or visit our website for recipes!
- Strawberry
Known as nature’s candy, strawberries are packed with a juicy, jammy, sweet, and sometimes tart flavor that is loved by people from all over the world and across generations. It is a classic American fruit found in a vast number of applications. People enjoy them alone or in desserts, salads, jellies, and beverages.
Strawberries are native to the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere and are cultivated worldwide. A typical strawberry season lasts between April through July,
The average American will eat three-and-a-half pounds of fresh strawberries each year. It’s no wonder this is one of the most popular juice concentrate flavors at Northwest Naturals and throughout the food and beverage industry. In addition to the popularity in taste, customers like NWN Strawberry Juice Concentrate WONF because of its consistency in flavor crop year over year. Its consistency helps regulate its pricing, making it a dependable product for customers.
The NWN Strawberry Juice Concentrate is a stable flavor that pairs nicely with many other fruits and is the perfect, cost-effective solution for many applications.
Application Inspiration
Create classics like strawberry shortcakes or a strawberry lemonade flavor for kombuchas, seltzers, cocktails, and other beverages. Get creative with strawberry syrup or crème fraîche. We’ve seen incredible applications like balsamic strawberry ice cream and a roasted strawberry-Merlot sauce for meats. Utilize the fruit as is, or mix it with other fruits for summertime sweets. Strawberry chocolate bars, strawberry bread pudding, and strawberry sangrias are just a fraction of the possibilities.
Request a sample or visit our website for recipes!
- Watermelon
Watermelons are summertime icons. They are one of the juiciest and most refreshing fruits that can grace a summer picnic spread, but their history may be even juicier!
Watermelons have been cultivated in Egypt for more than 5,000 years. In fact, we can find drawings of watermelons in Egyptian tombs! The fruit spread from Africa to China in the 10th century, and today, China grows more watermelons than any other country. The U.S. ranks fourth in the world for watermelon production. It produces more than 4 billion pounds annually while consuming more of this fruit by weight than any other fruit.
Watermelon is typically eaten raw, though it can also be enjoyed candied, pickled, grilled, in salads, soups, plainly juiced— the list continues. It is a versatile fruit that blends well with many flavors. We often recommend NWN’s Clarified Watermelon Juice Concentrate to clients looking for a juice concentrate base to build taste from and want a flavor consistent in taste and cost, year over year.
Application Inspiration
Take advantage of this fruit’s exceptional juiciness and create refreshing recipes from watermelon salad to sorbets. This fruit will be delicious in savory and sweet food and drinks across the board, regardless of industry. Experiment with watermelon gazpacho, watermelon cocktails, watermelon and cheese combinations, and watermelon salsa! Try a boozy watermelon popsicle or keep it alcohol-free with watermelon mocktails.
Our R&D team enjoys experimenting, and we created a delightful watermelon mojito pop recipe and watermelon + ginger to invoke Moscow mules. Not only was it tasty, but it also had many health benefits! We can’t wait to see what your business creates!
Request a sample or visit our website for recipes!
- Plum
While plums aren’t the most popular fruit or a classic flavor, NWN wants to bring more attention to this delicious, adaptable, and colorful fruit to give it the acclaim it deserves! Its taste varies from extremely sweet to quite tart and can be enjoyed fresh, baked, stewed, or pruned.
Popular all over the world, plum trees are grown on every continent except Antarctica. While over 140 varieties of plums are sold in the U.S., there are two main kinds: European and Japanese. There is little information on European plums, but we know that their Japanese cousins originated in China over 2,000 years ago.
NWN offers a Red Plum Juice Concentrate and sources their plums from either the U.S. or Chile, depending on the time of the year and rotating on the growing season. It’s a product that is reliable and available year-round. It is adaptable and creates a balanced taste in many products while adding a pretty red-toned color, making for a beautiful finished product.
Application Inspiration
Plums are as diverse in taste as they are in how they can be consumed. Create plum cakes, plum cobbler, and plum jam. For savory applications, create plum sauces for almond chicken and pair them with saffron or rosemary. Any woodsy herb would pair deliciously.
Though plums are commonly used in baked goods, Northwest Naturals loves pushing the envelope! Our team experimented and created various applications with it, from cocktails to frozen delights to dressings and even cheeses. We recently adopted a baked good recipe into a cocktail, creating a Spiced Plum Manhattan with cinnamon, nutmeg, and bourbon. We’re also working on a plum sorbet with subtle hints of warm spices — just in time for the spicy fall season that will soon be on our doorstep. Stay updated on our blogs to ensure your applications stay on top of the seasons!
Request a sample or visit our website for recipes!
Let’s create something great together!
It isn’t too late to get started on your next summertime bestseller! Whether creating the next best strawberry ice cream flavor on the market or crafting the new trending watermelon soup, we love providing the best flavors and the perfect solutions for our clients any time of the year. So, are you looking to bring your application to life? Contact us or request a sample today!