The price is too much, especially when The National Clonal Germplasm Repository at Corvallis, Oregon, sends out plants for free. I put in an order on line there last year for two Rose de Cote d'Or raspberry plants, after David Karp raved about their taste in his article. Two tiny, rooted cuttings arrived a few weeks ago, after around a year's wait, and are leafing out nicely in their one gallon pot. There might not be enough chill here to fruit them, but it's fun trying. Several French websites report that it's one of the most aromatic raspberries in existence. Here is a link that might be useful: NCGR-Corvallis - Rubus Germplasm

I have Triple Crown, Apache and Navaho and the TC makes the most perfect berries and they are earlier than all the others but they are not very sweet. They aren't bland, just kinda sour. They work well when cooking (when you add sugar to them). The Navaho has the best eat-it-in-the-field flavor and the berries are very large - but they always have some voids on them (poor pollination) and often some botrytis too.

When comparing the productivity of the two varieties, more information would be needed than just the length of the trellises. It is obvious in Don's setup that there are many more Doyle berries than TCs. I would be interested to know how many florocanes of each type there are, or even how many feet of laterals for each variety. Perhaps they were pruned and trained to have roughly equal amounts. TC is known for having fewer berries per cluster. The data that Scott posts is from the North Willamette Research and Extension Center near Charbonneau. Willamette is a small town some distance away and across the Willamette River. Not that any of you were going to get lost driving there! The Research Center has many varieties in the test fields, many of them take on a "wall of black" appearance due to the fruit density. The quest is to get more fruit and less foliage for ease of mechanical harvest.

Sugarshane: Second the motion on what Austransplant said about the duller color, and would add only that ripe blackberries tend to separate from the plant with a very tender pull. Trouble is, at that stage they are also about ready to fall off, and if that happens they are usually ruined. They do not accumulate more sugars once they are off the canes. But let's be realistic. Blackberries are not intrinsically a very sweet berry until they reach the danger point for falling off, and when picked at the dull stage their shelf life is very short indeed. You either have to eat them, process them, or freeze them very quickly. For industrial uses like jellymaking, winemaking, or cobblers, where some sugar is added, I wouldn't wait until the very end. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA