Tastes can differ, but even so, there is no possible way that che fruit would ever be considered delicious. It has a mild insipid flavor. 99% of those who try it agrees that it has a mild insipid flavor. Some people do like that flavor, but it is basically a watered down, less tasty, version of watermelon juice. Under no circumstances should it ever be described as delicious. It has no tartness. It has no raspberry flavor. It has no acidity at all.
The reporter in the video you posted above was saying how amazing the che fruit was that she nibbled on and said something about it being one of the best fruits she had ever eaten (I haven’t seen the video in a long time), but after exclaiming how wonderful the fruit was, she ate only 1/2 of one small che fruit. She could not finish even eating one fruit. If you want to know what che tastes like, that’s what it tastes like - not good enough to even finish one fruit.
I grew che from the early 1990s to 2020, about 28 years. At one time I grew every cultivar I could find in the US, which in the mid 1990s was maybe 6 or 7 different ones. They all tasted almost exactly the same. Occasionally over the years someone would tell me they had one that tastes better and I have had people send me some of those fruits. They have all tasted very similar. But the taste is not the biggest problem. All che fruit is mildly sweet and insipid which is certainly not horrible, but it’s very boring, and if you can’t name 100 tree fruits that taste better than che, you haven’t been involved in the fruit world for very long. Still, taste is not the main problem. The texture and construction of the fruit is odd, with segments connected by stringy tough dividers. Che is an aggregate fruit that has unusual chewing qualities because of the stringiness and toughness between segments. I don’t like that chewing experience and many others don’t either. More than one person has referred to the fruit as “disgusting”. If you like insipidly sweet flavors with a vague watermelon flavor (although greatly inferior to actual watermelons), and can’t find real watermelons, then juicing che is probably the best way to consume it.
There is very little genetic diversity in che trees in the US. This was noted in plant literature well before the 1990s. The trees in the US all look the same and grow the same. The fruit all looks the same. The fruit all tastes very, very similar. The only difference I’ve ever noted that indicates that different cultivars are actually different is that ripening times may be different, but that’s hard to verify because very few people grow multiple che cultivars in one location. It’s hard to compare ripening times between trees grown in different climates. Some people are now growing che with yellow fruits and I have not sampled them. Reports are that the flavor is very similar to the red fruits (surprise!) and of course the unpleasant fruit structure and texture is exactly the same. These yellow fruited trees are apparently seedlings so they will be invasive ( see below).
Che trees are discussed in “Uncommon Fruits For Every Garden” by Lee Reich. In that book, Reich notes that the Chinese consider the fruit to be “unwholesome”. That is not my comment. That is a statement written by Lee Reich. The Chinese have at least 1000 cultivars of jujube. They probably have less than 30 cultivars of che. This seems to be attributed to two issues - 1. che trees are very similar genetically, even in China, and 2. Compared to the other tree fruits grown in China, che is at or near the bottom. When I visited the Nanjing Botanical Gardens in 1993 for the primary purpose of seeing chestnut trees, I asked to see their che trees, because I was in the beginning stages of my interest in che trees. They actually laughed at me (not in a mean spirited way, but in the way a parent would laugh at a child who wanted to drive to Hawaii from the mainland). They had no che tree and could not imagine why anyone would waste space to grow them for fruit. By the end of the 1990s I was wondering the same thing.
Jujube fruit sales in China every year are massive. Che fruit is generally not commercially cultivated in China and I have never seen the fruit for sale anywhere in China. I have been to modern grocery stores in China that had more than 300 linear feet of shelf space devoted to dried jujubes and 25 square feet of counter space devote to fresh jujubes. They had no che fruit. Why would anyone grow che trees when they could devote their time and energy to jujube trees?
Che trees are very nice ornamentals, but on their own roots they are highly invasive. Their roots spread out and form thickets of thorny growth. If you have a lot of extra room, then plant che on osage orange rootstock. But if you have limited space, plant something better. I found them to be a fun tree to grow because they are very tough, but as they get older, the fruit dropping is a potential problem. I could not find any animal, or person, that would eat it. Even people who said they liked che would only eat one or two fruits per year. I also grew out a number of seedlings in the mid 1990s but that was a really bad idea. The young trees have very thorny growth and their roots spread quickly if not confined. Trees in one gallon pots would send roots out through the bottom of the pots even during the first year of growth. If you pulled the pot up, the roots in the ground would continue growing and send up sprouts with nasty thorns. Che was much worse than growing kudzu seedlings because kudzu needs a lot of water to survive. Che doesn’t. Luckily I got rid of my male che trees before the females started producing much fruit. Luckily, birds and other critters never spread the seeds because they refused to eat the fruit. In some areas of the US though, people have reported that deer and some other critters will occasionally eat the fruit. If those fruit have seeds, sooner or later, you’re going to see an infestation of che trees that will be far worse than Bradford pears. There are che growers scattered around the US who grow their female trees with male trees intentionally so that the fruits produce seeds. This is pretty much one of the worst ideas I have ever heard in the fruit growing world.
So, to sum up, I grew che trees for about 28 years, and have sampled fruit from maybe 9-10 different cultivars. I sampled two new ones a couple of years ago, and they tasted like all the other ones.
