My Premier Rabbiteye blueberry produces good medium sized, firm, intensely sweet, strong blueberry flavored berries. The first time I tried it I fell in love instantly! It’s the feeling of tasting a “real” fruit for the first time, and more some! Here’s are the ones I’ve tried, and experience: Ochlockonee was bland, Brightwell was a tad less bland, Tifblue was tart. I’ll keep them for another year to see. I researched more afterwards and it seems I was accurate on their flavor nuances, many say they’re sweet and good for production but nothing exceptional, only Brightwell and Ochlockonee was split 50/50 but they were also the ones I thought were going to be exceptional but ended up tasting bland. I first tasted my Premier after it was five years old since I heavily neglected it in plain native clay when I was focusing on fruit trees. I’ll guess you’d get berries as good as them once they’ve grown 2 feet tall and wide(1-2 years if cared for properly). They should be picked when fully ripen or when they fall off with a gentle touch like any other variety. I can’t say much on production since I had no other variety for pollination at the time and also had very average potting soil when I tasted them. I’m honestly surprise no one has rave about this cultivar for flavor. The cheapest place you could get them is from Ison Nursery, which is where I got the other varieties from, they were all healthy and fast growing. There might be cheaper places I haven’t heard of yet. Just wanted to recommend and give info on this cultivar ‘Premier’ for anyone who is trying to find an absolute flavor-bomb blueberry, along with asking if anyone have also had any “to die for” tasting varieties, Rabbiteye, low, or high bush, they’ll like to recommending? Also, did my cultivar evaluation match yours?
I really like Sweetcrisp, Razz, Sweetheart, Draper for flavor. I didn’t care much for Premier.
I’m a blueberry collector as well 
Razz blew me away last year. Planning on getting at least 5 more of them this year. I have over 50 blueberry bushes. I’ll stop eventually…
Still need to figure out where i want them all to be placed in my property.
Sweetheart = bug magnet compared to all my other varieties. I have 36 varieties last i counted
Interesting! What about O’Neal?
Blue Ribbon is also a really good one and the most productive of all the varieties I have.
Everything else has been so-so but they’re young, couple year old plants so I’ll have to get back to you on production outside of Blue ribbon in a few days.
I don’t have an issue with disease for the most part. Mummy berry happened a lot in all my sweetheart plants and i suspect it’s from whatever but biting the fruit and passing along the fungus. No one variety had this issue for me
Oh yeah! ONeal was a great one too! I wanna get more of that as well. Forget about it because of the name lol. I don’t like that name
Do you have a ranking for taste and/or production?
Production: Blue Ribbon blows everyone out of the water
Taste: Razz, SweetCrisp, O’Neal, Draper, Pink lemonade, Blue Ribbon, Darrow, Toro, Pink Popcorn
In that order for taste wise if i recall correctly.
Clockwork threw me off. 3+ weeks of being blue and it still didn’t taste sweet. My biggest disappointment of the year.
Are you growing multiples of a variety for longer season harvest? Or, for the novelty of sublet flavor differences perhaps? You said Premier wasn’t to your liking, was that in terms of flavor or performance?
Try Cara’s Choice if you can grow Highbush… your lists will change.
KaBluey and BlueRay here are also musts.
I like complex flavors though… so YMMV.
If you want rabbiteye blueberries specifically Yadkin is supposedly the best of the best in terms of flavor (but a little more finicky than the toughest rabbiteyes)
Vernon, Alapaha, and Krewer are also reported to have good flavor along with other good traits for a commercial berry (firmness, yields, etc)
Interesting. I was considering getting 2 of the following: Alapaha, brightwell and premier. There are so many blueberry opinions on this site. Some common trends in opinions, but a lot of differing on what is the best. It seems it’s just a matter of seeing what has the best flavor at your specific site….making it hard to pick!
Heard people say Ka-Bluey is on the softer side, am I wrong?
Razz was better than Ka Bluey for me.
Who carries the Yadkin? Needs to be shipped to California, which can rule out many nurseries.
Thanks.
IMO, you suffer from lack of growing enough different varieties of blueberries. I mean that in the best possible way. Plant more varieties and sample them!
Premier is at best a middle of the pack variety. O’Neal is a top notch variety for flavor but tends to be a bit difficult to grow in my climate. It took 5 years to get it to the point of making a good crop this year. Yadkin is a very good flavored blueberry but is temperamental. Kabluey is excellent, but best used for fresh eating IMO. Blueray is excellent but not easy to grow here in southern TN. I set out Cara’s Choice and Columbus this year so won’t know much about them for another year or two. Georgia Giant, Titan, Vernon, and Krewer are excellent varieties and have produced good crops for me. I don’t rate their flavor as being up to snuff compared to others. O’Neal in particular has been consistently top rated for flavor. Brightwell is one I like a lot, but it is mostly a very sweet blueberry. Flavor complexity is low.
I have been growing blueberries for a long time. I’m not currently growing Premier but I remember it being a fairly large fruiting variety with a decent taste. Rabbit Eye blueberries have done well for me in central Alabama. Titan, Climax, and Alapaha seem to grow well at my location and I’m sure many others would also that I haven’t tested. I have also grown Pink Lemonade for several years now mostly to have one that was different. I added 1 Brightwell earlier this year but I removed the fruit from it so I am looking forward to getting a sample from it in 2026. All my blueberry varieties taste good and sweet but I have to net them so they can ripen long enough for the best taste. I added 6 more plants this year (2025) because everyone loves blueberries. I’ve never had anyone tell me they didn’t like a well ripened blueberry.
Likely! Should’ve stated that in my post. I liked Premier due to its sweetness, but her richness with no tart was what surprised me since I’m not too interested in blueberries even if they’re homegrown, I consider them excellent but nothing to boast about, and many cultivars I’ve seen well reviewed seem to either be through pure sweetness or unique flavor, which I rather save space on for other fruits. Unfortunately Cara’s Choice, Kabluey, and most uncommon SHB cultivars have shipping restrictions to Ga. Do you know the age of your Premier and Brightwell Bushes? I had Premier for 5.5 years and Brightwell for 2 years, hopefully Brightwell will taste sweet as well if not rich. Mind me asking what your native soil is like there for O’Neal and Yadkin? Was planning on getting O’Neals but don’t know how they’d do in the surrounding clay here even if the planted space will be a acidic soil base. might have to pot them up like some of the others.
We have Premier, Oklockanee, Powder Blue, and Climax.
Climax and Premier are my favorite.
But they are also the first to fruit, so my taste buds are quite overcome by springtime when we start picking and I’m not sure how objective I’m being.
My oldest bushes are 7 ft tall… 5 ft wide…
2 Climax and 1 Tifblue.
They produce a lot of nice berries. Climax ripens first and when they are about done Tifblue starts ripening.
They both taste great to us… far better than what we can buy at walmart or local grocery stores. Our tifblue has plenty of sweet to go with the tart.
TNHunter
Plus Krewer has large berries.