The Most Planted Orange In Florida Is Prized For Its Sweet Juice

Of all the citrus varieties in the country, oranges produce the most popular juice for drinking with no additional ingredients necessary (unless, of course, you want to add your favorite type of sparkling wine to it for easy two-ingredient mimosas). No offense to grapefruit juice fans, but orange juice contains the perfect amount of sweet and tang, without the overt bitterness of the former. While both Florida and California are known for sprawling orange groves, it's Florida that grows huge numbers of Valencia oranges, which are beloved for their abundant and very sweet juice.

Valencia oranges have thinner skin, which means there's more pulp and therefore juice compared to other varietals, along with a lower seed count. If you've ever poured yourself a glass of orange juice and left it sitting on the table, and then noticed it tastes a little bitter after a while, then the juice probably wasn't made from Valencia oranges. Oranges contain a compound called limonin which can make the fruit taste bitter when it's exposed to air. Valencia oranges contain very little limonin which means the juice stays sweeter for longer.

According to the USDA, it was estimated that Florida would produce 7 million 90-pound boxes of Valencia oranges compared to 4.6 million boxes of other orange varietals in the 2024 to 2025 growing season. The state's grapefruit, lemon, and tangerine numbers were speculated to be substantially lower.

With the huge numbers of Valencia oranges grown in Florida each year, it would be easy to assume that the fruit is native to The Sunshine State. It's not, nor is it native to the Spanish city of Valencia, after which it was named. Make no mistake, the European town is certainly famed for its oranges, but the Valencia orange varietal we are familiar with in America is a hybrid developed by a citrus farmer in California named William Wolfskill. He blended a California varietal with an orange from Spain to create it. It thrived in California for a while but Florida found better success with it, with its warm and humid weather.

Although it makes up over half of the orange crop in Florida, and the fruit is certainly fine for peeling and eating, over 90% of oranges grown in the state are used for juice. When you do find Valencia oranges for sale in the store, it's likely to be in the summertime when they are at their ripest. This sets them apart from other oranges which are typically ripe in the winter months. The fact that they aren't native to Florida is of little matter; the Southern state is still famous for some of the most wonderful and famed citrus in the country. Big juice brands like Tropicana, Simply Orange, and Florida's Natural (all of which appeared on our ultimate ranking of store-bought orange juice) are all based in Florida.