Why Was Ben & Jerry's Maine Blueberry Ice Cream Discontinued?

Ripe blueberries are sold in droves at farmers markets in the summer months, but there hasn't been a blueberry season at Ben & Jerry's since 1993. That's when the Vermont-based creamery dug a hole deep enough to fit the imaginary coffin of its Wild Maine Blueberry flavor, adding yet another plot to its Flavor Graveyard, a real-life ice cream cemetery in Waterbury, Vermont that pays tribute to all the pints that have melted away to a better place. "Wild Maine Blueberry / From the land of the puffin, / Now when we crave you / We turn to the muffin," reads its headstone. 

With its base of blueberry ice cream swirled with blueberry purée and dotted with frozen Maine blueberries, the flavor was a periwinkle-hued trifecta of the beloved summer fruit. So, why did Ben and Jerry decide to bury it in the ground? The answer is less of a scoop than we'd hoped. 

Ben & Jerry's Wild Maine Blueberry ice cream was only a year old when it shuffled off its mortal coil. We could understand such a fate for a more experimental flavor — Ben & Jerry's is certainly not afraid of hawking creative pints — but losing an ice cream that stars such a well-liked berry is a little more puzzling. 

Food Republic posits that there may have been too much blueberry action and wonders if an additional flavor component may have saved the flavor from its untimely death. "Combining wild Maine blueberries with the brand's cheesecake elements from its existing Strawberry Cheesecake flavor may lead to better sales results," writes the outlet. 

Indeed, as of 2022, Ben & Jerry's top 10 ice cream flavors are dominated by pints with more than one thing going for them. Case in point: The top flavor went to Half Baked, which boasts a base of chocolate and vanilla ice cream with dollops of chocolate chip cookie dough and chunks of fudge brownies. 

Wild Maine Blueberry may appear to be in its final resting place, but disheartened fans should know that Ben & Jerry's has the celestial power to bring back departed flavors from the grave. On its website, the brand encourages customers to "tell us what flavor you'd like to see back and why" and vows to "resurrect the most popular."

It's a rare occurrence, but it's happened before. In 2022, the brand dug up its Dublin Mudslide flavor, made from a whey spirit base mixed with double chocolate chip cookies and coffee fudge swirls. It was initially introduced in a Limited Batch in 2004 and put to rest in 2007. Fifteen years later, it rose from the ashes with a push from the sustainable distillery Wheyward Spirit. 

If Wild Maine Blueberry were to follow suit, our guess would be that it would come back with some sort of swirl, fudge, or cookie element. Until then, you can always go blueberry picking and make your own version of the ice cream at home.