Why Fuerte Lost California to Hass: Alternate Bearing and a Mail Carrier’s Tree
Why does everybody grow Hass? It was not always that way. For a long stretch, the avocado California growers planted was the Fuerte. Hass took over for two reasons: Fuerte’s erratic, alternate-bearing crops, and one lucky seedling that a mail carrier named Rudolph Hass let grow on his land in La Habra Heights.
We still grow Fuerte, and we are fond of it. But it is worth understanding why an entire industry walked away from it, because the reason is less about flavor than about the calendar.
What went wrong with Fuerte?
Nothing went wrong with the fruit. Fuerte is smooth-skinned, green when ripe and rich in flavor. The problem is the tree. Fuerte is notorious for alternate bearing: one year a bumper crop, the next year not so much.
If you are a backyard grower, that is a curiosity. If you are running a commercial grove, it is a serious headache. Your income swings with the tree. The UC growers’ handbook puts it bluntly: Fuerte yields “have always been known to be severely alternating, often causing serious cash flow problems for growers,” and early Fuerte growers also had to live with a short harvest season. Packers and stores want steady supply they can plan around, and a variety that is generous one year and stingy the next makes that hard for everyone down the line.
Where did Hass come from?
Hass was an accident. In 1926 Rudolph Hass, a mail carrier, bought a batch of seedling trees from a nursery in Whittier and planted them on his property in La Habra Heights, California. The plan was to graft them over to Fuerte, the variety everyone wanted. On one seedling the Fuerte buds would not take after three tries, so he let it grow. He thought its rough, dark fruit was ugly until his children kept telling him to taste it.
The fruit turned out to be something special: a pebbly skin that darkens as it ripens, creamy flesh with a nutty flavor and, crucially, a longer season and steadier crops than Fuerte. Hass is not free of alternate bearing — the handbook is clear that Hass groves can swing too — but a UC Cooperative Extension study covering the 19 years through 1982 found California Hass averaged about 7,249 pounds an acre against about 4,842 for Fuerte. He patented the variety in 1935 as U.S. Plant Patent No. 139.
From that one seedling came the variety that became the gold standard for California avocados. Every Hass tree in the world today traces back to it through grafting, since a seed never grows true to its parent. We went further into that story in our post on Hass avocado patent 139.
Why does the grocery store only carry one?
It was not an overnight takeover. Shoppers had learned that an avocado was supposed to be green, and it took years of promotion before the black fruit caught on. By 1957 Hass was only 15% of the California crop; it passed Fuerte in volume in 1972, and by 1990 it was 83% of production against 2% for Fuerte.
Once growers and packers settled on Hass, the rest of the supply chain followed. The darkening skin even helps shoppers judge ripeness, it hides bruises and pickers’ fingernail marks, and a thicker skin holds up better in shipping. The lonely Fuerte slipped to the wayside, and today most shoppers have never tasted one. We compared the two directly in Hass vs Fuerte: why your grocery store only sells one.
Why we still grow Fuerte
Commercial logic favors Hass, and most of what we grow is Hass. But Fuerte has a flavor and a history worth keeping, and it fills a different part of the year for us. Its timing is its own story, which we covered in why bloom dates do not predict harvest.
Alternate bearing does not go away just because you love the tree. It means some Fuerte years are lean, and we plan around that rather than pretend otherwise.
If you have only ever eaten Hass, a Fuerte is worth trying once. Our 4lb Fuerte box ships when the trees have fruit, and our 6lb Hass box is there for the gold standard — either page has a waitlist for the months between harvests.
This post is part of our guide to the history of California avocados.
