The particulars
Season
July–August
Picked
By hand, when fully black
Tastes of
Dark berry, green stem, weak black tea
Field notes
Blackcurrants are rarely eaten as they are. They go into jam, cordial and cough sweets, and come out tasting mostly of sugar. On their own they are sharp, dark and a little wild, with something green behind the fruit. The bushes grow in rows on a fruit farm two valleys over.
We pick in late July, when the berries have turned from red to black and the strigs come away easily. The grower harvests most of his crop by machine. Ours is picked by hand in the cool of the morning, which he finds funny and charges us for.
The berries are pressed cold the same day and never heated, which keeps the juice clear and the flavour sharp. They go in skins and all, so the drink carries a gentle tannin, something like weak black tea. The result tastes of the bush it came from, not of sugar.
