What Is An 'Heirloom' Walnut?

The Short Answer: Heirloom reflects the fact that a horticultural variety has come to us from hundreds of years ago, propagated by cuttings, and unchanged through generations. It suggests values of an earlier time, such as home grown, and seasonal availability of food. In contrast to “improved” varieties, heirloom varieties may be more perishable, but their flavor more than makes up for their ephemeral quality.

A similar use of “heirloom” describes vegetable crops, such as Nantes carrots and Kentucky Wonder green beans which come to us by way of farmers who saved the seeds of their open pollinated crops and planted them in subsequent years over many generations. In this case, “heirloom” is in contrast to intentionally hybridized seed of modern invention.

The Long Answer: As an adjective, “heirloom” denotes a quality about a fruit or nut variety that distinguishes it from modern varieties considered “improved” by way of breeding for specific traits in a university or corporate breeding program. Heirloom varieties come down to us from an earlier period of agriculture when varieties were valued for their benefits to the whole community: They were of superior flavor, they were well adapted to the local soil and climate, they were integral to the local cuisine, and they proved their value over time. They were not, necessarily, the most productive varieties. But neither were they fodder of factory farms, financed by corporate entities which expected a large payoff.

Some sources define “heirloom” to mean open-pollinated, as in vegetable crops such as tomatoes and carrots. But that is not how I use it regarding perennial, horticultural crops such as walnuts or winegrapes. Franquette walnuts and Cabernet sauvignon winegrapes were evidently the result of purpose driven breeding, but from at least 250 years ago before qualities such as ‘shelf-stable’, ‘export-suitable’ or ‘industrial process compatible’ could be imagined.

Our 3 heirloom walnut varieties all come to us from French tradition. When the world poured into Northern California during the gold rush, a French immigrant, Felix Gillet, came to Nevada City with a passion for horticulture and fruit production. He was dismayed at the dearth of good fresh fruit in the burgeoning state, and he pined for the food of his childhood in France. By importing the beloved fruit and nut varieties from his homeland, Felix Gillet became an important, but somewhat overlooked pioneer of California fruit production.

By the 1870’s, walnuts already had a long, but troubled, history in California. From as long as 300 years ago, Spanish colonial trade introduced walnuts from the Spanish Mediterranean to South America, and from there to the California missions. The ancestors of early California walnut orchards were transported as seeds (in-shell nuts), in complex trade routes involving briny cargo holds of ships and overland travel across the isthmus of Panama. Some walnuts may even have come from China by way of the Manilla-Acapulco trade route. The problem was that seeds do not reproduce true to type: Any cohort of seedling trees will show substantial variability. After repeated generations of seed propagation, the trees that came to populate the groves at the missions of Alta California had all the qualities of determined survivors, but few agronomic or culinary qualities. Felix Gillet saw an opportunity in California’s paucity of quality fruits and nuts: he would import the finest French stock to sell from his new nursery in Nevada City.

His introductions of French walnut varieties made possible a new agricultural enterprise in California. Our orchard is a direct descendent of the trees he imported in the 1870’s. The new variety of Hartley resulted from a cross between the two imported varieties of Franquette and Mayette. Seedling trees from that cross were planted on a property on Big Ranch Road in the Napa Valley, and went on to become the most popular variety planted in all of California. I like to say that Hartley is the first American born daughter of two French immigrant parents, who went on to become a star!

Nevertheless, these tasty nuts are now “out of favor” with the larger California walnut industry. Trees are low yielding, shells accounts for as much as 75% of the harvested weight, and shelled kernels have a short shelf life due to their high fat content. The consolidation of growers and shippers has resulted in the “handlers” opting not to buy heirloom walnut varieties from independent farmers like us. And because of the heavy footprint of bank lending on most California farms, the majority of Franquette, Hartley, Poe and other heirloom varieties have been bulldozed to make way for the university introductions.

Luckily, our orchard is so small that no bank would ever have lent us money to remove and replant our trees with the “improved” varieties! Our trees may produce a modest yield, but what they lack in tons they make up for in their oil-rich, buttery flavor. We can thank generations of unknown farmers before us for their dedication to propagating and preserving these treasures so that we might enjoy them to this day.