New product Wednesday, at Dallas-area stores: Black Velvet apricots

by Teresa Gubbins

There it sits, nestled in the produce section, lounging on its bed of corrugated paper shavings: the Black Velvet Apricot. That's a seductive name for a fruit that's a cross between a plum and an apricot, and a good example of how marketing/packaging can transform a product.

Apricot-plum hybrids have been showing up since the late '90s and come in two less-seductive-sounding categories:

• Pluot. 75% plum and 25% apricot, with the smooth/shiny skin of a plum
• Aprium. 75% apricot and 25% plum, with the downy fuzz of an apricot

And they called it Black Velvet.

These appear in all sorts of varieties and colors; some look like regular old plums. The ones I seek out are the Dappled varieties of pluots, which have tawny skin with splotches of red and gold, like an Impressionist painting of an autumn day, with beautiful red flesh that's juicy and sweet.

But "pluot" sounds klunky next to the charismatic "black velvet apricot."

Although black velvet apricots have been around for a couple of years, they've emerged big-time this summer, including Dallas-area markets. They come from grower-packer-shipper Kingsburg Orchards in California’s San Joaquin Valley, and are an aprium, but with more plum than the usual apricot-centric aprium.

The skin is deep purple like a plum, but has the fuzz of an apricot. Inside, the flesh has the amber color of an apricot, but with more moisture than an apricot (whose flesh tends to be firmer and more "jellied"). The flavor is a pleasing merger of the tang of a plum with the rich mellowness of an apricot. But the best part is that when you're eating it, you can say, "Oh I'm having a Black Velvet."