I took a double-take as I scanned the produce at a Middle Eastern grocery store. Piled up among the Iranian cucumbers, Indian baby eggplants, and ricrac-wavy Romano green beans was a heaping box of tiny apricots. It was the second day of June and my third attempt to find an apricot that tasted like an apricot. Fool me twice; shame on me crossed my mind as I held the ripe fragrant fruit to my nose.

The tiny fruit felt as it should, with a slight give of the flesh and skin. I was tempted to pop the walnut-size fruit in my mouth, but visions of watery, mealy, inedible fruit and a pit clacking around in my teeth quashed the impulse.

Finding a naturally ripe apricot in a store is a rarity. Cousins to the peach and plum, apricots are delicate fruits sensitive to harsh winds and late frosts. Unlike the one-size-fits-all grocery store supply chain system, ripe apricots require a personal touch. They must be picked at just the right time, not too early, not too late, to achieve a perfect balance of tartness and sweetness. With this market’s connections to growers of fruits and vegetables seldom seen elsewhere, they didn’t worry about forecasting tools, blockchains, or transportation efficiency. To them, quality is based on taste.