French strawberries: the best varieties and when to eat them

My birthday is in late May and our family always celebrated the day by eating the first English strawberries of the year. As a result, I have huge affection for this little red fruit. 

In France, however, you do not have to wait until Wimbledon season to get that first and fleeting taste of home-grown strawberries – les fraises are available in France from March onwards and you can continue to buy and eat French-grown fruit until the end of October.

I bought my first strawberries in our local market early in March this year. They were a variety called Gariguette, which is arguably France’s most popular strawberry. 

Gariguette, characterised by its distinctive, elongated shape and acidic, refreshing taste, is one of a wide range of strawberries available in France. 

There are hundreds of varieties worldwide, but probably about a dozen which are reliably available here. 

Most are categorised as des fraises de saison – seasonal fruit which have a window of availability after which you must wait until next year to enjoy them again. You will find these in shops and markets from March until, perhaps, July. 

Other varieties are known as remontantes where the plants continue to fruit until well into the autumn. 

It is worth trying as many varieties as you can, as the flavours vary and the French, being so discerning where food is concerned, demand the best. 

Later in the year, you will find such varieties as Ciflorette, Charlotte and Mara de Bois – my all-time favourite, which is available from May until mid-autumn. 

Mara de Bois is less acidic than Gariguette, highly perfumed, smaller and more rounded in shape. It is a close relative of the iconic, wild woodland strawberry (fraise de bois) and carries many of its characteristics. 

I would make jam, strawberry ice cream or a tart with most strawberry varieties, but I would never do anything other than eat Mara de Bois unadulterated. 

Always keep your strawberries at room temperature as the warmth highlights the flavour, texture and aroma. This does mean you have to eat them quickly, of course, but I have never found that to be a problem.

Strawberries first came to France in 1714. They were brought by boat from Chile. The man responsible was a naval engineer called Amédée-François Frézier, which suggests that the fruit was named after him. 

Modern cultivation

These days, they are grown throughout the country, but the main area of production is in the Dordogne and Garonne valleys of the south-west. 

In Dordogne, production was taken up after the department’s wine production was devastated by the phylloxera outbreak of the late 19th Century. Hectares of vines had to be torn up and replaced with a new source of income and the climate was perfect for strawberries. 

Today, the small town of Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne in Corrèze is the heart of the French strawberry industry. This exceptionally pretty riverside town is known as the site du goût pour la fraise and hosts a strawberry festival each year on the second Sunday in May (this year on May 11). 

In 1990, the town produced a vast, Guinness Record-holding strawberry tart which measured 8m in diameter and weighed 700kg. They also hold the record for the longest ever strawberry plant – at 32m.

The reason Beaulieu-sur-Mer was able to grow such an enormous plant was because strawberry plants grow runners, or baby plants which are attached to the parent by a long stem. 

This characteristic also makes them very easy to reproduce as you can root the baby plants and, once they are established, cut the joining stem which will give you a genetically identical new plant. 

Commercially, growers usually produce their strawberries hydroponically – that is to say in substrate-filled trays which are vertically stacked allowing the plantlets to hang below the parent plant. The racks are housed under glass or polythene and in carefully controlled conditions. 

If you do not like the idea of eating strawberries which have been grown like this you can still buy field-grown strawberries in France – either by careful shopping or by picking your own from organisations such as Chapeau de Paille, which operate pick-your-own farms across France. 

The other option, of course, is to grow your own. However, we have a problem with this method. The fruit rarely makes it back to the house; we eat them all before they get there.