AKA THE TANGERINE MAN
Photography by Lisa Brenneis
Hey! Mister Tangerine Man, sing a song for me; in that juicy citrus orchard I’ll come following you . . .
I’ve had a longtime love affair with the clementine. I grew up near Valencia, the orange capital of the world. Clementines were so cheap and delicious that I carried them in my pockets to school as a kid. People talk about Spain’s ham and olive oil and wine, but they rarely talk about its citrus, which is unrivaled anywhere else in the world. Or so I had always thought.
In the Ojai Valley you will find seventeen acres of rolling orchards where they grow what are probably the best tangerines in the world—very small and very easy to peel, every segment seedless and pithless, with an amazing balance of sweetness and acidity. The first time I traveled to California with my family, we didn’t go to Disneyland. We didn’t go to the beach. We went to an orchard to meet the Tangerine Man.
Jim Churchill stumbled into the citrus business. When he started working the orchard for his father in 1979, the only things then grown on the property were Bacon avocados, which sound delicious, but the trees were infected with root rot. One day, Jim was helping to sort fruit at a local packing center and came across a piece of citrus he had never seen before—the little-known Pixie tangerine. He took one bite and his brain lit up like a Vegas nightscape. He replaced his diseased avocado trees with eighty Pixie trees and began to carve out a niche market for this perfect little piece of fruit. Today Jim and his wife, Lisa, have a thousand Pixie trees, plus half a dozen other extraordinary citrus you can’t find anywhere else: Kishu, Oro Blanco, Celestial Golden Juice Queen.
The Ojai Valley burns hot during the day. At night the ocean breezes roll in to cool off the trees and develop the deep yin-yang flavor that I crave from my childhood. “Anyone can grow something sweet,” says Jim. “It’s the acidity that haunts you.”
East Coast chefs used to poke fun at California chefs who serve a simple piece of fruit as dessert at their fancy restaurants. But when I tasted the Churchills’ Pixie tangerine, I understood. This fruit is a collaboration between Mother Nature and the Tangerine Man, and it’s best for chefs to stay out of the way.
Ever since that first trip out to Ojai years ago, I’ve ordered a few boxes of mandarins and clementines from Jim and Lisa every winter. When they show up on our doorstep in early January, it’s like Christmas all over again— we sit and unwrap our precious fruit, piece by piece, and the rinds pile up in great orange mountains on our kitchen table.
Jim and Lisa could have made a fortune by selling their land and retiring years ago, but they chose to continue to work the soil and spread the Pixie gospel. It takes a very special person to show this type of dedication to a single craft—a life built around one beautiful bite. I do the opposite—a million things at once, trying to indulge every one of my passions—but I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without people like the Tangerine Man.