The sign in the market pointed out that only the skin of the black watermelon was black, and that it was red inside. Good point. Last summer, black watermelons were in the news when a coveted densuke melon, grown only in Hokkaido at the northern tip of Japan, sold for the equivalent of $6100. Mine was 49 cents a pound, making it about $5, but I have some suspicion it differed in other ways as well.

There are over 1200 varieties of watermelon. So-called black watermelons are usually very dark green and lack the typical light stripes. The variety I bought is called Imagination. A variety called moon and stars has been grown in the US since 1926. It has yellow dots and occasional larger disks, hence “moon and stars,” on dark skin. Park Seed Company sells seeds for the Watermelon Everglade Hybrid, a seedless variety they refer to as a Bowling Ball. The “Black Diamond“http://www.reimerseeds.com/black-diamond-watermelons-blue-ribbon-winner.aspx variety is fairly common, but it’s more obviously dark green rather than black. Vendors on amazon.com claim to be selling seeds from the Hokkaido variety.

I bought my melon from a local supermarket, the Raley’s in Newark, California. It was seedless, which probably puts it closer to the Everglades than Hokkaido, but the taste had similarities with the descriptions of the densuke. (I missed the Hokkaido melon auction this year.) It had a different kind of sweetness from a typical watermelon, and it was much superior to an ordinary seedless melon. The densuke is described as extremely crisp, and that was not true of my melon. It had the typical crunch, although again better than a typical seedless.

A sticker identified the grower as Vierra Farms, a small producer in California’s Central Valley, near Sacramento. Thanks to them for bringing a fine product to market. I hope consumers will get on the bandwagon by trying some of the great varieties of produce that that are offered these days.

I doubt if we in the United States will ever rise to levels of melon appreciation held in Japan. Watermelons and cantaloupes are luxury gift items in Japan, and so absolute perfection is sought and handsomely rewarded. The closest comparison here is probably wine, where what most of us consider small differences command a high premium, and where and how the product is produced, embodied in the reputation of the maker, demands a premium as well. Try to convince a wine connoisseur that $250 bottle is not really worth that much more than a $10 bottle. Same with watermelons.