Why Fuerte Is Our Family’s Favorite Avocado
Every family has a favorite tree. Ours is a Fuerte. It is Becca’s favorite — Kirk calls her the boss, so that settles it — and it is Oma’s favorite too. Fuerte is also our favorite variety overall, and this particular tree is completely loaded with fruit.
Plenty of you have been asking when Fuerte season is. It is coming. We promise.
What makes Fuerte different from Hass?
Fuerte is a smooth-skinned avocado. Where a Hass has pebbly skin that turns dark as it ripens, a Fuerte has thin, smooth green skin that stays green. You judge its ripeness by a gentle squeeze rather than by color.
The flesh is the reason we love it: really nutty and really buttery. We have written about why stores stock Hass anyway, and why we quietly prefer the other one, in Hass vs Fuerte.
Why do we call it the OG variety?
Because before Hass took over, Fuerte was the avocado. Most growers in California were growing and selling Fuerte before Hass came into prevalence, and for a long stretch it was what people meant when they said avocado. The first Fuerte orchard went in near Yorba Linda in 1914, and the University of California’s grower handbook calls Fuerte the variety the California avocado industry was built on. Hass did not pass it in volume until 1972.
The name is Spanish for “strong,” given because the young trees survived the severe January 1913 freeze that killed most of the nursery stock around them. Hass eventually won out for reasons that had little to do with taste; plenty of people still consider Fuerte the best-tasting avocado. Fuerte sets fruit erratically and swings between heavy and light years more than Hass does, and over a 19-year record Hass groves averaged about 7,249 pounds an acre against Fuerte’s 4,842. Hass also has a longer season, and its thick, dark skin hides bruises and handles shipping well. We go deeper in why Fuerte lost California to Hass.
How loaded is this tree?
Get close to it and you can see just how many avocados are hanging on this one tree alone. A crop like that is a good sign for the season ahead. Fuerte trees also have a habit of producing the occasional seedless fruit, called a cuke; if you ever find a small, long avocado with no pit in your box, our post on avocado cukes explains what happened.
We cannot give you a date yet. Avocados do not ripen on the tree, so the fruit hangs there until it reaches maturity, and we would rather wait a little longer than pick too early and send you something that never softens properly. When the Fuertes are ready, you will hear about it.
What should you make with Fuerte avocados?
Keep it simple. That nutty, buttery flavor is so good on avocado toast that it hardly needs anything else, and it makes an exceptionally rich hummus — Becca’s avocado hummus is a good place to start.
For more on when the fruit is ready and how the season follows Hass, see our post on Fuerte avocado season.
When the fruit on this tree is ready, it goes into our 4lb Fuerte box. If it is not in season when you read this, join the waitlist on that page and we will email you as soon as it is.
This post is part of our guide to choosing, ripening and using avocados.
