Last spring I bought a Vainiglia orange from Tintori - mainly for use in hybridising experiments. The idea was to use this acidless orange to reduce the bitterness of hardy hybrids.
Today I tasted the first fruit. It was not acidless as expected. Although not very sour, it certainly was just as acid as the Trovita orange which I am growing. Trovita is a good orange for cool climates, but I thought Vainiglia would be much less acid and verging on the insipid.
Do you think my Vainiglia is really some other cultivar - or were my expectations wrong?
Mike/Citrange

Any chance it is a climate factor, yours ripen differently to the same var in Italy? Similar to some Pummelo vars, sour as lemons outside the tropics?

Mine is acidless, but very flavorful. NOT at all like other acidless citrus, such as the Palestine Lime, which I do not care for at all. Now that DOES taste just like watered down lemonade. Vaniglia Sanguino is very flavorful, just hardly any acid at all. I think it is actually a good choice for those who just can't tolerate the citric acid of other sweet oranges or even mandarins. I actually like them a lot. Mine are great, and probably due to my climate being very similar to the citrus area of Italy where they grow. They taste a bit like an orange Creamsicle to me (for those not from the USA, a very popular popscicle that has an orange outer coating, with vanilla ice cream underneath).

I'm beginning to think I have something other than Vainiglia.
I do have a sweet lemon and a sweet limetta, both of which taste obviously acidless even though growing in my cool climate. So I believe Vainiglia should, at the very least, be noticeably different from other oranges.
Trouble is, it's not easy to obtain plants from Tintori, and I can't find any source of Vainiglia in the UK. Perhaps in the spring I will ask Tintori to send me some budwood - save the cost and effort of another trip to Tuscany. On the other hand, perhaps it's a good excuse to visit Tintori again. Even if they made a mistake in labelling my plant, it is definitely a 'must see' destination for any citrus collector.

I am surprised that you had troubles of getting plants from Tintory in UK.
This autumn I ordered several of them, the communication by mail was excellent and I got the plants in 10 days.

Mike, what variety do you have: vainiglia or vanilIa sanguigno? I have the second. It is 100% acidless.

My first two Vainiglia Sanguigno fruits this year also tasted like a normal orange. I am quite sure that I have the right variety because it had some blood stripes in the pulp. The fruit was already ripe in early winter (about early November). I think my fruit had some acidity because it was not totally ripe. But that is the advantage of acidless oranges: You can eat them very early as a normal orange and can eat them late as an acidless orange. Mine was also tasty but the fruit that I harvested later had less acidity so that I could at least imagine what is meant by insipid. But insipid would really have been to hard a word.

I also hope that I can use it for crossing. An article has greatly encouraged me that crossing with low acid citrus results in hybrids with less acidity. But Vainigla Sanguigno has almost no seeds. It is, however, a robust plant according to my experience.

I noticed the Vainiglia Saguigno in the store for the first time this year, marketed by Buck Farms (CA) as a "Mango orange". Very strange - I hadn't known, prior to trying it, that their "Mango" is Vainiglia Saguigno, and had never had one before. Definitely unlike any other citrus - in addition to the low-to-no acidity, it is just much "fruitier" - both the Vainiglia and Mango are justifiable names. Its not one that I think I would devote space to growing, but I would be interested in trying a homegrown fruit for comparison.

Till - It's good to hear that your fruit - which grow in a similar climate to mine - also at first taste like an ordinary orange. My small plant only had three oranges, so the remaining two will be left for a couple more months before tasting again. By then I hope they will taste different!
Mike/Citrange

I bought a seeded vaniglia orange from tintori last spring.
Tasted the fruit when they were just turning orange (around November). Man, that was bland. Like, an orange filled with water. And keep in mind that I don't like acid citrus. Tasted another by the end of January. Same experience.

Now, I think that growing environment must have something to do with the blandness. In Sicily they are highly esteemed, and they don't have shortage of good citrus. So apparently they must get a good tasted if well cared. The plant I got was overloaded with fruit, and also grafted on citrus macrophylla (apparently Tintori does graft on it a lot). Macrophylla makes beautiful plant, but the quality of fruits goes down.

Citrange, if you are still interested in this plant send me a PM.

Vaniglia Sanguigno is a true acidless orange. pH is >6 (even higher than Palestinian sweet lime). In regular oranges pH is normally between 3 and 4 ...it's a massive difference in acidity.
The seeds of true acidless orange are light in colour and do not have the typical dark 'chalazal spot' at one end of the inner seed coat.