Mango Grove

In the mango grove, they bag mangoes in paper bags to keep the insects away, except for the unfertilized ones, like the little red ones below.

These mangoes were bigger than my head, and supposed to be very sweet. Apparently, they’ve been breeding them into super mangoes!  After they’re picked, they’ll be dunked very quickly into boiling water to remove any remaining insect residues.  They have to be very careful in this process so that the mangoes can be certified as organic and exported to Japan.

With this variety of mango, they pick them while they’re still somewhat unripe, and then pack them in a sealed basket, surrounded by newspaper, and rocks of calcium carbonate (if I’m remembering correctly, and it’s quite possible that I’m not…) in order to ripen them.

I think I had one of these when we were in Tainan, and it had a very sweet flavor with a slight tang to it.