Trade term
l'Horta Nord, where these oranges are grown
l'Horta Nord is the comarca north of València, between the Túria and the sea, and every planting we sell from stands in it. The FAO dossier for the heritage listing describes the northern strip of this huerta as citrus ground, growing navel oranges and clementines. It describes the same ground as a landscape of very small farms, and that is the half a buyer has to price in.
The figures
| Comarca | l'Horta Nord, province of València, between the Túria and the Mediterranean |
|---|---|
| Municipalities we grow in | Moncada, Alfara del Patriarca and Albuixech |
| Heritage listing | Historical Irrigation System at l'Horta de València, designated by FAO in 2019, status Designated |
| What the dossier records growing in the northern strip | Oranges (navel and white) and tangerines (satsuma, clementines and hybrids) |
| The canal | Real Acequia de Moncada, named in the dossier as the great irrigation canal of l'Horta Nord, governing its area since the 13th century |
| Ground | Holocene deposits of the Túria and the barranc del Carraixet; fluvisols, reddish-brown soils and gleysols |
| Farm size across the huerta | Of 6,083 farms, 76 % under 3 ha and 5 % above 10 ha; 96 % family led (2009 census, quoted in the dossier) |
| Public citrus research inside the comarca | IVIA, Moncada: citrus germplasm bank and the sanitary improvement programme for citrus varieties |
| Flow the Túria puts into this network | 470 hm3 a year, all year round; the ravines that cross the plain fill only in a storm |
| Water source of our own blocks | Unrecorded on all five plantings |
What it changes on an order
You are checking an origin claim on paper
Comarca and municipality can be read off a map and set against the documents that travel with a load. The FAO designation sits above both and works differently: it recognises an irrigation system and the landscape around it, grades no fruit and belongs to nobody in particular. The dossier separately notes that citrus from this strip carries a geographical indication, which is a register with its own rules, and we make no claim on it.
You need a full load a week from one origin
The census quoted in the dossier counts a few thousand farms across the districts of the huerta, three quarters of them tiny and almost all worked by the family that owns them. Volume out of this comarca normally arrives assembled by a packer from many owners. Ours is one of the small holdings, and a buyer who needs a lorry every week should hear that at the start rather than after a sample.
You are weighing water risk into a multi year listing
The dossier calls the risk of shortage for the historic irrigation of l'Horta virtually nil, and it says why: a river that flows all year, a reservoir upstream holding back a season, and a city that drinks only a fifth of the resource. That is an assessment of a canal network rather than a promise attached to a field, and it is the strongest thing this origin hands a buyer.
What this note does not settle
- The FAO designation covers an irrigation system and its landscape. It certifies no grower, grades no fruit and cannot be printed on a pallet label or written into a specification as a quality mark.
- Nothing on this page connects the canal to our trees. Water source and irrigation method are unrecorded on all five plantings, and the ground described here is the geology of the plain rather than an analysis of any block of ours.
- The land use and farm size figures reach us through a dossier published in 2019 that quotes an agricultural census taken a decade earlier. They describe the huerta of that period, and a comarca pressed against a growing city does not stand still.
Source: FAO, Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, Historical Irrigation System at l'Horta de València, FAO GIAHS proposal dossier for l'Horta de València, 2019, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias, Moncada
A comarca you can cross in a morning
l'Horta Nord starts where the plain meets the higher ground inland and finishes on the Mediterranean shore, and the distance between those two edges is short. Our three municipalities are strung along it: Moncada at the head of the plain, Alfara del Patriarca a little way down, and Albuixech with its boundary on the beach. Everything we are able to offer therefore comes out of a single comarca, fed by one historic network of ditches, which is a narrower origin than most Spanish citrus offers can honestly claim.
That is a real answer to the question of origin and also an uncomfortable one. The dossier behind the listing describes the northern strip of this huerta as the part that grows navel oranges and clementines, which is precisely the range on our variety pages. The same document describes the same strip as a mosaic of very small family plots, most of them farmed alongside another job. Both halves are true of us, and the second half is the one a supplier is tempted to leave out of a first email.
The water is the argument, and it stops at the field gate
Ask a buyer what an origin is worth and the answer usually comes back as risk. By that measure the most useful pages of the dossier are the ones about water. A river that runs the whole year feeds this network, a reservoir upstream smooths a dry season, the city above it takes a modest share, and the assessment puts the chance of the historic huerta running short at close to nothing. That is the part of this origin a dry winter does not take away.
It also stops at the field gate, and saying so is the point of this page. None of our five plantings has its water source or its irrigation method written down, so nothing here can tell you whether a particular block drinks from the canal, from a well, or from both, and no sample of our ground has ever gone to a laboratory. The listing belongs to the system and not to any grower inside it, so it will never appear on a label or in a specification. What it gives a buyer is a reason to ask better questions, and those are questions we would have to go and answer.
Talk to the grower
Tell us the variety, the sizes and the delivery week you need. You get a delivered price and what we can commit to in writing, from the person who picks the fruit.
The grower handles enquiries. Response times are still to be confirmed.