Mara des Bois Strawberries
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Mara des Bois is a French strawberry variety bred in the early 1990s with a specific goal: to produce a cultivated strawberry that tastes and smells like a wild one. Wild strawberries (Fragaria vesca — fraise des bois) have an intense, perfumed flavour that cultivated varieties almost never match, but they are tiny and impractical to grow at any commercial scale. Mara des Bois was the attempt to bridge that gap — a berry large enough to pick and sell, with the aromatic complexity of its wild ancestor.
The result is a small-to-medium strawberry — noticeably smaller than the oversized varieties bred for supermarket shelves — with a deep red colour that runs all the way through the flesh rather than fading to white at the core. The aroma is the most immediately striking thing: a concentrated, almost perfumed strawberry scent with notes that sit somewhere between wild strawberry, rose, and a hint of something close to caramel. The flavour follows — sweet with a clean acidity that prevents it from being flat, and a complexity that unfolds rather than arriving all at once.
Mara des Bois is an everbearing (remontant) variety, which means it produces multiple flushes of fruit across the growing season rather than a single June crop like traditional varieties. This extends availability through the summer and into early autumn, though the flavour is generally most intense in the earlier pickings when temperatures are moderate. High heat dilutes the volatile compounds responsible for the aroma.
These are fragile berries with thin skins and high juice content — they do not travel or store well, which is precisely why they are not available in supermarkets. Eat within a day or two of delivery. Serve at room temperature — cold suppresses the aromatics that are the entire point of this variety.
Producer: Prince de Bretagne — Brittany, France.
Ingredients: Mara des Bois strawberries (Fragaria × ananassa 'Mara des Bois').
Storage: Refrigerate if not eating immediately, but bring to room temperature before serving.