THERE ARE ARGUMENTS to be made for the strawberry and raspberry; but in my own gustatory opinion—a bias derived from perhaps five million berries picked and processed—the tiny blueberry, Vaccinium angustifolium, is the queen of small fruit, the singer in the band. Its name alone is simplicity verging on poetry. And its shape is a teensy echo of the planet itself—which, as any spaceman can tell you, is mostly blue.
But it is on the palate, of course, that the little blue prodigy really comes to life. Biting into a mouthful of ripe blueberries is a tactile as well as a taste sensation, each berry releasing its inky, ambrosial load with a subtle pop, followed by a burst of muted tartness, then the inevitable rush of fruit sugar that evolves smartly onto the deeper taste buds, flushing sideways and backwards off the tongue and then down the hatch.
I prefer my berries fresh-picked, straight into the kisser in handfuls, right in the blueberry patch. But I’ll happily eat them from a bowl with milk; on Cheerios, Shreddies, Bran
