Re: Wild Black Cherry Trees?

Hmmm... my grandmother and, more recently, I have made jelly from wild black cherries and I'm still here... are the "poisons" stable enough to stay in the pit even tho' the whole fruit (pit and all) are boiled to make the jelly, then squeezed out? Or is it just too dilute to matter? The jelly *is* astringent, which I'd assumed was from the pits...

(What would be an easy way to de-pit a whole batch of wild cherries?)

Just wondering...

Derric

A cherry pitter/stoner?

Quixote

Interesting ... perhaps some of those "wheel" types would work with the black cherries (which are very small). Those "single cherry" types either wouldn't work or would be a whole lot of trouble for the tiny cherries.

Thanks.

Also, I looked around a lot today and confirmed that the seeds do have the hydrocyanic acid... but also all the jelly recipes I found just cook the whole thing, pit and all. Perhaps the heat doesn't release the acid?

Derric

Cooking is reported to drive off or neutralize hydrocyanic (prussic) acid.

I personally would discourage making wine from wild cherry trees. But I would not hesitate for a min. in using wild cherries. ;o) If you pit them, as you should with any stone fruit, they will be fine. I wish I could get wild cherries. As mentioned above, you can get a cherry pitter for a resonable price and it goes pretty quick

As far as blackberries, dewberry and black berry wines are my favorite country wines. They make delightful dry red wines. Light on body as a french wine, hence they go great with almost any food. Use 5 to 7 lbs of berries per gallon of wine. That is a lot and a lot of work to pick but less will give a wine with no body. Incidentlally, both cherry and berry wine blend very well with a strong grape wine such as Cab. Sauv. or they blend well together. Make them seperately and then experiment. Great fun.

If picking 7 lbs of berries per gallon seems to honerous, consider making a black berry mead. Delightful!. Use 3 lbs of berries per gallon and enough honey to give an 11-12% wine. No higher. The honey will add the body the berries need and the taste blend is wonderful. Make it semi dry or semi sweet. Really good and refreshing.

Ray