I had the chance to taste one of my last Nikita’s Gift fruits of the season at the same time as one of my first Sestronka fruits. The texture of both is very similar - soft but not mushy, even when fully ripe and not watery. Nikita’s Gift fruit are a bit larger on average, but both cultivars are smaller than most kaki I’ve grown. I think Sestronka has the better flavor - a little more of the D. virginiana flavor while Nikita’s Gift tastes more like a kaki (though both are somewhere in between D. virginiana and D. kaki in terms of flavor). I also tasted a late Kasandra today but didn’t keep one for the photo. The Kasandra fruit is smaller on average than Sestronka and Nikita’s Gift and more like D. kaki in flavor than either of these two. I’m glad to grow them all! The tree in the pictures is Sestronka. The fruit on the left of the plate is Sestronka, with Nikita’s Gift on the right.
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