Violette de Bordeaux

Violette de Bordeaux has documented history extending to around 1680, when it was reportedly grown in the gardens at the Palace of Versailles. Its exact regional home within France is genuinely disputed among historians and collectors — it is claimed by both Provence (where it is called Violette de Bordeaux) and, separately, the area around Bordeaux and Marseille in southwest France (where a very similar fig is called Figue de Marseille). A closely related but debated variety, Negronne, is associated with Aix-en-Provence; whether commercially available "Negronne" stock is genetically identical to Violette de Bordeaux or simply very similar remains unsettled, with genetic testing conducted in 2010 confirming that at least the specific strains "Beer's Black," "Violette de Bordeaux," and "Vista" are true synonyms of one another. It reached modern American prominence after a group of rare fruit growers rediscovered it at the University of California, Davis's fig collection in the summer of 1987, and cuttings taken then are the source of most trees grown across America today. The fruit is small to medium, purple-black skin with deep red pulp, and delivers a rich, sweet, berry-forward flavor that many longtime collectors rate among the very best-tasting figs available, in a genuinely compact tree well suited to pots. It produces two crops per year and is self-fertile.