Dates

Details

Soft Mazafati type dates, the variety sold across India as Kimia, brought in from the growing belt in Iran and cold-packed here. They are dark, moist and heavy, they are eaten as they are, and the stone is in. Two things get done to dates before they reach a shelf, and both are about appearance. The first is a glucose or sugar syrup dip, which puts a wet shine on a dull date and, far more usefully to a packer, adds weight to a fruit sold by weight. The second is sulphur, used across dried fruit to hold colour and stretch shelf life, and permitted within a limit, though a date this naturally dark has no honest need of it. Then there is the confusion the first cheat creates. A white bloom on a date is usually nothing at all: it is the fruit's own sugar crystallising out with age or with cold storage, and it is harmless. It is also what a syruped date looks like once the dip dries, so the two get conflated, shoppers learn to distrust any bloom, and packers glaze precisely to prevent it. Ours are uncoated, so bloom here is only ever the date.

• No glucose or sugar syrup dip, added sugar tested per lot
• No sulphur dioxide, SO2 residue tested per lot
• No oil, wax or mineral glaze of any kind
• No added colour and no preservative
• Cold chain kept from the packhouse, so the softness is the fruit's own and not heat put back into it
• Whole, with the stone in, sold as they grew
• A white bloom may appear in cool weather. It is sugar, not mould, and it is nothing to worry about
• They are stickier and less shiny than a glazed date, and the pack will clump in summer heat