Instructions: Once again, its time to ask: When a Walla Walla Sweet Onion comes into the room, should I bow, curtsy or simply fall to my knees?

I get that way around celebrities. Never sure whether to duck into a corner or attempt an awkward bit of conversation: "Pretty interesting growing up over there by the penitentiary?" I might ask, while the onion glares back with a chilling silence.

What once was a mere onion display in the supermarket now is a pedestal for the pedigreed. The Walla Walla Sweet is the currently reigning Lord of the Aisle, one that well see around until the middle of the month.

But over the course of the year, plenty of grand and glorious sweet onions from elsewhere pay us visits. How are we to behave, say, around a Georgia Vidalia? A California Imperial? A Texas 1015? An Ecuadorean Sweet? An OSO Sweet from Chili?

If you believe their boosters and backers, each variety has a scientific and historic importance akin to Christopher Columbus discovering America.

First, though, its important to know what a sweet onion is and why theyre so popular. Low in sulfur and usually higher in sugar, these are the onions that can be eaten raw without tears.

"In the winter, you want a stronger-flavored onion because people are making stews and roasts, things that tend to cook longer," said Joe Pulicicchio, a longtime produce buyer in Washington State - home of the Walla Walla. "Once youve moved into spring and summer, people arent making those dishes as much; theyre slicing onions on hamburgers, using them in salads or lightly sauteing them."

For the most part, the major sweet onions rotate through stores in their own season from January through August, with minimal overlap. But the competition for store space and consumers attention has been increasing, and will likely continue to do so. Some reasons:
New varieties are constantly being developed; ditto for ways to package and market them.

Americans have dual passions for specialty labels and for trying new gourmet foods.

Although sweet onions typically have a short shelf life, producers are trying to extend their seasons through "controlled-atmosphere" storage. Long used for apples, the process lowers the oxygen content in storage areas to retard the aging process.

Every onion marching down the supermarket aisle seems to come with its own claim to fame.

Take the Texas 1015 SuperSweet. It goes by the nickname "million-dollar baby" because of the time, effort and money spent on its development at Texas A & M University back in the early 1980s - when a million bucks was real money, not just a down payment on a condo. The "1015" comes from its ideal planting time, Oct. 15. and the OSO Sweet from South America, the first sweet onion of the new year?

Tests at Michigan State University indicate this Chilean-grown specialty has a sugar content 50 percent higher than other sweet-onion varieties.

Maui Onions carry the charm of reminding people of their Hawaiian vacation.

But because of the shipping charges, they cost several times the price of regular onions. And heres a bit of cocktail-party chatter: Californias Sweet Imperials, hybrid offspring of a flat Bermuda and a top-shaped Grano, grow in the loamy desert soil of the Imperial Valley - at an elevation lower than sea level.

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