Shipova happens to be one of my favorite fruits, due to how its character changes during ripening. I grow in W WA, so in the cool summer/high moisture in fall/winter/spring conditions that this thread is discovering may be particularly advantageous for getting the best flavor out of this fruit. First tried the fruit from Burnt Ridge Nursery, and enjoyed the Asian pear/Euro pear mixture of flavor and texture it presented. Now I know it was probably mature, but not completely ripe. Before the fruit develops the pink “kiss” in one spot, after the yellow skin turns to vivid gold, the flavor and texture remind me of a less juicy Asian pear. Not bad, but not great either.
At the peak of ripeness, once the pink kiss arrives and the yellow skin has turned vivid, the flavor and texture changes. It develops the slick, sweet, smooth texture of a good Euro pear and the flavor offers hints of the tropics - some describe it as guava, some as mango, some papaya - but I’ve never had a Euro pear that tasted like that! Really, really good!
And now for the VERY surprising part: this fruit will last for months in refrigeration. I had about 2 dozen that I left in the crisper, and for a while I just didn’t want to muck them out. After about 2 months I decided I needed the space for something else, and on a hunch I tried one. This time the flavor was totally different - intensely sweet, rich, with a distinctive almond flavor. It was incredibly good. So I think we can safely say this fruit will blet, like medlar, but without the large seeds to manage (unlike medlar). I think this superpower comes from its Sorbus heritage - having tried the fruit of Sorbus domestica, I now realize they both share that distinctive sweet almond flavor and soft, smooth texture when bletted.
I’ve experienced Shipova’s biennial bearing tendency - which I don’t like - so I’m going to try to heavily thin my next big crop in its earliest stages, to see if I can keep the tree from exhausting itself. It’s also an exceptionally lovely tree in the landscape, with its distinctive pyramidal growth habit and the grey, felty leaves - it’s certainly a keeper for me.
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