PORCELAIN garlic originates in the Caucasus Mountain range, which stretches between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, near the western edge of the Silk Road which was a primary distribution point. From there, garlic was taken south, into the Middle East, or northwest, into Europe. The plants are tall with broad leaves, the scapes form wider loops rather than coils. The bulbs have white wrappers with 5-7 large tannish red cloves, producing 30-40 cloves per pound. They mature late, are quite pungent and will store 6-8 months. According to the Ft. Collins genetic fingerprinting study, most Porcelains tested are identical. These include well known varieties like Music, Georgian Crystal, Georgian Fire, German Porcelain, etc. Variety trials here in SW Oregon with a dozen or so varieties over successive seasons largely confirms those findings. Porcelains seem more susceptible to viral pressure than other types and varieties that have declined have been regularly discontinued and/or replaced. Fortunately, some of them are capable of sexual reproduction and new clones grown out from True Garlic Seed show greatly increased vigor. These seed grown cultivars will also usher in much needed diversity to this limited gene pool. Porcelains are $11 per ¼ lb; $17 per ½ lb; $27 per lb.
Hadrut plants are tall and vigorous forming a broad canopy, the tight bulbs typically Porcelain with 6-7 plump reddish cloves. Hot and sulfurous raw with good flavor retention when cooked.
It is from the southern tip of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh (“nagorno” or “nagorny” means mountainous), a region within Azerbaijan historically populated by Armenians. A rise in Armenian nationalist sentiment in the late 1980s eventually led to conflict over this territory after the collapse of the Soviet Union. While Nagorno-Karabakh was predominantly Armenian, it had a sizable population of Azeris. What began as low level strife escalated into a war which cost tens of thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Azerbaijanis. While the Armenian separatists won control over Nagorno-Karabakh (renaming it Artsakh), as well as some surrounding territory (expelling hundreds of thousands of Azeris from their homes in the process), the conflict remained frozen, unresolved and the threat of war, persisted. That is until September 2020 when full blown war resumed. In six weeks of fighting, thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced. Azerbaijan, flush with oil wealth, with the full backing of Turkey, armed with high tech Israeli weaponry, had the goal of retaking all of Karabakh. It prevailed militarily and retook much of its previously lost territory, including the city and district of Hadrut. The Armenians living there were in turn killed or expelled, most fleeing northward. In 2023 the remaining Armenians living in Karabakh were under a blockade for over nine months cutting them off from food, medical supplies, etc. After amassing weaponry including more plane loads of military cargo from Israel on 18 September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive with the goal of total conquest of the region. Outgunned, the Armenians surrendered and the entire population, over 100,000 people were purged from their homes and fled over the mountains. Since then, Azerbaijan has renamed the region Khankendi and has commenced the erasure the vestiges of Armenian existence, bulldozing neighborhoods, churches, cemeteries, etc.
This cultivar came named “Armenian” but has been and continues to be grown by both Azerbaijanis and Armenians, garlic featuring prominently in the cuisines of both ethnicities. In the Armenian language garlic is “skhtor”; and in Azeri, a Turkik language, it’s “sarimsaq”.
Krasnodar White: consistently productive year after year, Krasnodar White is your typical Porcelain with big plants, white peppery and sulfurous raw, nutty and starchy when roasted. The garlic was acquired by Carl Rosen in the city of Krasnodar which lies in the southwest of Russia near the Black Sea. Founded at the end of the 18th century as a military outpost for Russian expansion into the Caucasus, by the Kuban Cossacks who acted as imperial foot soldiers that carried out the mass ethnic cleansing of the region’s now former inhabitants: the Circassians. Also in the Krasnodar Province is the southern city of Sochi, better known as the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics and under which lie the mass graves of the Circassian people. The garlic has produced TGS and is the parent of several lines of progeny.
Arsia: ❧ This is the first generation progeny of Krasnodar White. It is named for the southernmost volcano in the equatorial Tharsis Mountain Range on Mars. Arsia Mons stands twelve miles high two hundred seventy miles in diameter. Sumptuously sulfurous, it expresses all the characteristics of a Porcelain garlic with white wrappers sheathing reddish, long cloves on medium sized bulbs. Of the first generation progeny of Krasnodar White, this was the most stable and best keeping. It matures ahead of other Porcelains and counter to the size of the volcano it’s named for, the plants are comparatively short. It is also producer of true seed and subsequent generations if its progeny are being propagated.