The harvest of the PDO Fuentes de Ebro onion, the leading vegetable in the area of Fuentes de Ebro, in the Spanish province of Zaragoza, has been underway for a couple of weeks now. "This year, the weather has been good and, organoleptically speaking, we are obtaining onions with their characteristic mild, sweet flavour and exceptional quality. We are very happy with the product and with the volumes produced, in line with our sales forecasts, and the supply is now going to start reaching the consumers," says Daniel Molina, from Jumosol.
"There is an oversupply of other onion varieties and the product has been subject to speculation, with a lot more planted than in previous seasons, and that's affecting us all, because obviously we are all in the same market; however, the experience we have had over all these years is that our onion stands out and is highly appreciated thanks to its flavour and unique texture."
"Also, despite the fact that Fuentes de Ebro onions are more expensive to produce because the harvest cannot be mechanized and there are more discards than with conventional onions, our policy from the beginning has been to keep the price stable, so that consumers can afford PDO onions, and this is something we can do because, in addition to being producers, we are also marketers of Spain's original sweet onion," says Daniel.
"In the year 2000, sweet onion was a totally new product in Spain"
The fact is that the Fuentes de Ebro onion was the first successful sweet onion in Spain, and it has strongly consolidated its market position in recent years.
"Onion cultivation has traditionally been carried out in this area for many years, but its consumption has always been local. The soils here, characterized by an abundance of gypsum and calcium carbonate, and the steppe microclimate of this area of the central Ebro valley, have resulted in the onions grown here having less pungency and a milder flavour than other onions grown in Spain. In fact, I remember that around the year 2000, when the second generation joined the company founded by my parents and we started working to try selling the onion nationally, in the rest of Spain this type of sweet onion was perceived as a totally new product."
"At that point, we realized the potential it had and in 2003 we launched the project to get the PDO Fuentes de Ebro certification, which I was lucky enough to lead, and which we managed to obtain thanks to all the plant material that had been selected and safeguarded by our ancestors. I can proudly say that the Fuentes de Ebro onion is the best in the world and, with it, we have changed the way onions are eaten in Spain."
"Our land is giving us a real natural treasure that guarantees a future and a source of income for the region"
"After presenting it to supermarkets and clients, we were asked us if we could supply this same type of sweet onion all year round, because it was a product with a lot of potential, but with the Fuentes de Ebro production alone it wouldn't be possible. So, by chance, at the Fruit Logistica fair in 2003, we saw a very similar onion coming from Mexico. It wasn't like the one from Fuentes de Ebro, but it had the right characteristics and met our expectations of what a sweet onion should offer in terms of flavour," says Daniel. "From then on, we decided to start some trial imports from Latin America, and eventually, many years ago, we found an onion in Peru that complemented the PDO Fuentes de Ebro onion nicely in terms of seasonality."
"An interesting story is that when we were first drawing up the specifications for the PDO, the local elders told us that before irrigated crops were established in the Albacete area and onion cultivation spread there, onions were grown in Aragon. And when the varieties of the time, the Grano de oro or Valenciana, were planted in this area on the lower banks of the Ebro, they tended to turn into white and sweet onions due to the influence of the soil and the climate."
"Our land is giving us a real natural treasure which is highly appreciated and which guarantees a future and a source of income for the region. That is why we encourage consumers to look for the PDO seal, which guarantees that they are buying the authentic Fuentes de Ebro onion in these months when it is finally available again."
For more information:
Jumosol The Real Sweet Onion
C. Andrés Segovia, 50740 Fuentes de Ebro
Zaragoza, Spain
Tel.: +34 976 16 10 40
Email: [email protected]
www.therealsweetonion.com