Produce

Cherries (Fresh)

Sweet cherries (like Bing and Rainier varieties) and tart cherries (like Montmorency) are genuinely different in use — sweet cherries are typically eaten fresh, while tart cherries are almost always used cooked, in pies or preserves.

Unlike peaches or plums, cherries don't continue ripening much further once picked, so choosing ripe, ready-to-eat cherries at purchase matters more than with a stone fruit that can finish ripening at home.

Their notably sturdy skin, compared to a softer stone fruit like a peach, gives them a longer fresh fridge life, typically 1-2 weeks rather than just a few days.

The US cherry industry is concentrated heavily in a handful of states, with Washington state the dominant sweet cherry producer and Michigan the leading tart cherry grower, a regional split tied to each area's distinct growing climate suiting one variety better than the other.

Rainier cherries, a golden-and-red-blushed sweet variety developed at Washington State University in the mid-20th century, are prized for their delicate sweetness and short, especially fragile harvest season, which is part of why they typically command a noticeably higher price than a standard dark red Bing cherry.

A cherry pitter, a small hand tool that pushes the pit out through the stem end while leaving the fruit otherwise intact, makes pitting a large batch of cherries considerably faster than doing it by knife, a genuinely useful tool for anyone regularly baking a cherry pie or making preserves from scratch.

Cherry season in the US is famously short, typically just a few weeks in early to mid-summer depending on the region, a narrow window that's part of why fresh cherries carry a premium price compared to a fruit with a longer harvest season.

Maraschino cherries, the bright red, syrupy cherries used as a cocktail garnish and sundae topping, are made through an intensive process of bleaching, dyeing, and preserving cherries in a sugar syrup, a heavily processed product with little resemblance in flavor or texture to a fresh cherry off the tree.

Cherry blossom festivals, most famously in Japan and inspired by Washington DC's own gift trees from Japan in 1912, celebrate the flowering tree itself rather than its edible fruit — ornamental cherry trees grown for their blossoms are typically bred for flower display rather than fruit quality and produce little to no fruit worth eating.

A cherry's stem staying attached and green rather than dried out and brown is one of the more reliable freshness indicators at the point of purchase, since the stem tends to dry out and darken noticeably faster than the fruit itself once picked.

Cherries continue to feature in a genuinely wide range of alcoholic drinks beyond a simple garnish, including cherry brandy and kirsch, a clear cherry-pit-infused spirit distilled in parts of Germany, France, and Switzerland and used both as a sipping liqueur and a baking flavoring.

Black Forest cake, layered with chocolate sponge, whipped cream, and cherries soaked in kirsch, is one of the most internationally recognized traditional German desserts, taking its name directly from the Black Forest region where the cherry brandy used in the soaking liquid is traditionally produced.