Tanaka Orchards

Osoyoos is Canada's only true desert, and Ken Tanaka will tell you that's exactly what an Italian prune plum wants: blazing days, cold nights, and almost no rain. His family has farmed the east bench since 1971.

The Tanakas' plums are the ones your grandmother put up in jars — dense, freestone, never watery. They're picked with the bloom still dusty on the skin, which is how you know nobody's handled them twice.