In the family of ‘super foods’, the blackberry is rich in antioxidants and other powerful nutrients. Its flavour profile is just as powerful and its complexity is what drives its appeal.
Berry flavours have always been popular, yet consumers are increasingly attracted to the interesting profile of blackberry. Firmenich says this reflects a more general consumer desire to explore and to push the boundaries within the safety of familiar concepts. Last year’s flavour of the year was lime.
“Consumers are becoming highly discerning in their preferences, opting for more and more complexity in flavour profiles,” said Hidemi Tashiro, master flavorist at Firmenich. “This has caused a natural evolution towards profiles such as blackberry.”
David Lyon, director of Firmenich’s global sensory team, a group responsible for analysing the profiles of thousands of flavours each year, explains the appeal further: “According to AromaSphere, our proprietary tool to categorise the consumer language of flavour, the words that describe the profile of blackberry indicate the complexity of the flavour profile: ripe, sweet, acidic, juicy, seedy, jammy, spicy, and even floral at low levels,” he said. “These are the elements that interact with and complement each other, creating a complex profile with wide-reaching appeal.”
Firmenich believes that the ‘Millennials’ are helping to drive this trend towards blackberry. They are a group of consumers who, despite knowing exactly what they want, are also drawn to ‘adventure’.
Beyond the traditional berry applications such as dairy, Firmenich is seeing blackberry trends in other categories, noting Kashi’s Blackberry Graham cereal bars, beverage brand IZZE’s Sparkling Blackberry drink, and McDonald’s new Blackberry Raspberry Fruit Tea Fusion as just a few examples.
Yet, this trend goes beyond the world of retail and into restaurants as well. Firmenich cites menu items such as roasted rack of wild boar with a blackberry, sage and balsamic reduction; sweet potato quinoa cakes with blackberry salsa; and blackberry and fennel pizza as menu items recently spotted by their trend watchers around the world.
Because Blackberry is so versatile, the company is seeing it married with other spices and fruits.
“Blackberry is such a fun flavour to work with,” said master flavorist Robin Trumm. “It pairs well with many other flavours, including black pepper, apricot, Champagne, citrus, plums, port, and ginger, just to a name a few.”
The company predicts blackberry products will continue to increase and is developing beverage concepts such as blackberry ginger tea.
In Sweet Goods, blackberry will now be included in the company’s Haute Couture line of cereal flavours, which combines ancient grains and berries. There is also a blackberry flavour, filled doughnut cereal bar in the works.
Within the Savoury segment, applications such as honey blackberry salad dressing and ginger blackberry mustard glaze are in development.
© FoodBev Media Ltd 2024