Share
Every February we drive an hour east and stand in a cold field arguing about carrots. It is the least glamorous week of our year and the one that decides how the next twelve months taste.
Carrot sugar is not a constant. It moves with the soil, the rain and how late the grower is willing to leave the crop in the ground. A carrot pulled two weeks early presses sweet and thin; the same variety left in the cold builds structure. We buy the second kind, which means committing to a price before anyone knows what the season will do.
Why we sign for the whole field
Spot buying is cheaper and it is how most juice is made. It also means your recipe changes every week and you spend the year compensating with lemon. We take a whole row instead — good crates and bad — and adjust the press rather than the fruit.
It costs us roughly fourteen per cent more per litre. In exchange, Solar has tasted like Solar for four years running, and our grower knows in November what he is planting in March.