We had over 8 tasting events throughout this past fall. We kickstarted them with a fun rutabaga tasting during our Vancouver Island Mobile Seed Cleaner Tour. Gulf island folks from Salt Spring and Pender Island gave their thoughts on Nadmorska, York, Joan, and Alta Sweet rutabaga varieties. We received these rutabaga roots from the CANOVI grower John Pattison at Bright Farms. We used the same varieties to gather more data at a small tasting at our Seed Farm. In this trial as well as others, we found York to be the highest-rated rutabaga variety. Throughout both our rutabaga and radicchio trials we have seen a positive correlation between increased sweetness and ranking of overall flavour.
Our biggest tasting event of the year occurred at Burdock & Co where we had 57 participants rank 5 types of radicchio. As radicchios have varying dates of maturity, we supplemented this event with a couple of radicchio tastings at UBC Farmers Market. A big benefit of growing the CANOVI crops across multiple farms is the ability to supplement our tasting data with participating growers conducting their own tasting trials.