Whatever happened to good old-fashioned nectarines

The ones that were white fleshed, freestone with the lovely dark red flesh round the stone.
Just thinking . . . .

slowly dying out like many good apples

Saw half a truck load yesterday fruit truck from Kurow in Oamaru and the most delicious apricots $15 a heaped box soooo delicious.

Countdown are selling them atm.

I'm north of Auckland and not seen them in a local Countdown. However, there are the white-fleshed ones, but not freestone.

Sadly supermarkets have ruined decent produce now. They bullied the growers into growing produce with a long shelf life and colour, they do not care about taste.
Tomatoes are a good example,Gala apples are not the same, and onions with that dry skin piece up the centre of the bulb, potatoes are no longer what they used to be.

Ok sorry, missed the bit about freestone! They are on Countdown's website atm. but no idea how one would tell which are freestone, unless it's specifically mentioned?

We have old fruit trees that were planted in the 1960's and 70's - including a Paragon peach and original Granny Smith cultivar (tastes tart - completely different to the ones in supermarkets today). They are not as suited to modern commercial cultivation as:

a) some fruit heavily every second year & ripen all at once (our Paragon is like this),
b) The fruit are not uniform in shape and/or size (we have an old unidentified apple that is like this - they range in size from tennis balls to grapefruit),
c) Some don't have the disease resistance that newer variants have (one of our old apples gets black spot but I cut this out, doesn't affect the taste).

In saying this, although ours require a bit more love and care we would never trade them. Our peach smells amazing and when you eat them juice runs everywhere. Our apples, pears, grapes, cherries, currants, purple gooseberries and feijoas have a taste that is quite different to the supermarket ones. We are so lucky!

If you are interested, Allenton Nurseries in Ashburton still sell some of the old cultivars, as do the Koanga Institute in Wairoa.

I believe there is also a place down south (names escapes me at the moment) that save and sell heritage plants. Cleggboy is correct, nothing tastes the same anymore. Last summer I had the first nectrine that reminded me of taste of years ago. Devineeeeeeeee

Remember peacharines? Hardly heard of now yet my grandmother had many trees and sent the fruit to the markets. They made great bottling fruit as well as fresh eating.