CHeRiTH VaLLeY Farms Spirited Cherries
Now, I don’t think this is a bad thing, but many of the cherries I received in my jar of CHeRiTH Valley Farms Spirited Cherries looked like they’d had a bit of a rough life. There are no stems. The cherries are not plump and round, instead looking a bit deflated. They are red, but not overly so. They look a bit like good, fresh homemade pie filling.
And this, my friends, leads us to the very best thing about CHeRiTH VaLLeY Farms cherries: they test like good homemade pie filling. If someone poured a bit of rum or bourbon into their prize-winning cherry pie filling, we can only hope that it would taste like these cherries. They’re not visually stunning the way more standard-issue cocktail cherries are. They’re not soaking in the same rich history — or rich syrup — that makes Luxardo’s maraschino cherries such a favorite among cocktail aficionados. But, they’re absolutely delicious.
These cherries have a satisfying tartness, which I’ve found lacking in the other cocktail cherries I’ve tried. They don’t have that uniform, candied look that people may be used to, but they make up for it, hands down, in flavor. They’re neither overwhelming nor bland, and I’d be hard pressed to think of a drink that they wouldn’t work in. Granted, some of the cherries at the bottom of the jar may practically be pulp, but perhaps we should be suspicious of plant-based foods that appear perfectly uniform, anyhow.
This is the last of the four posts I had planned on cocktail cherries. As I come across other specialty brands, I’ll likely try them, but, for the moment, I’ll probably be sticking with these — sticking with in the sense that they’re what I’ll buy in the future. I certainly wouldn’t let any of the other brands in my fridge go to waist.
