Your Romeo looks fantastic!
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That looks like a great pie! Our cherries are behind yours. Ours typically ripen June 5th or later. Wonder how @IowaJer canadian cherries are doing. My only wish is these cherries were available sooner and we could have a good mechanical pitter!
It looks soo delicious! How do you pit the cherries?
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Thanks it was. My wife did the crust. I pitted them by hand since we only had about a half gallon. It would get old pitting 20 gallons.
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@clarkinks for years I watched your CJ bloom and fruit with envying. My CJ had always been a lot of bloom but very few fruits. But this year is different. My CJ bloomed and fruited like no tomorrow. The branches all dropped down loaded with berries. The berries are colored up and sized up nicely. In a week or 2 the berries should be ripe enough for picking.
Now, my questions are
1)how to pick them? There are a lot of berries to pick if by hands. Any tool that can make the picking job easier?
2) I don’t think I want to pit them, too much work. So what are my options to consume the berries?
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Yikes, thats a lot of cherries! I can’t think of a way around pitting them. Buy a few pitters and invite guest to pit? I’d go. Make sure you have a pie on hand.
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Yeah, I am thinking maybe making cherry wine dump whole thing into a bucket without pitting. But I am not sure if it is a safe way to do it. The seeds contain poison in certain degree.
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I used a paperclip and the seed came out quick.
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They are hard to find, but the old cast iron crank style pitters are fairly effective if you get one that has adjustable side plates so you can adjust for the smaller than normal pit size. Mine seem to work better with juliet that CJ.
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There are several things you can do. One thing many do and i dont is the use of a berry rake. They cost $10 - $20 
Like you i dont want to pit all those cherries so i extract the juice. I use a mehu-lisa juicer or something similar. The concept is the steam cooks the cherries down and the cherry juice runs out the hose leaving pit and waste behind. It makes a lot of juice! We pit a small number by hand for a pie or two. If you want to can the juice it comes out hot enough to do so. It will be the most concentrated , healthy cherry juice you have ever had in your life. I have made wine that way with no problems but dont crush the pits.
Remember many traditional juicers crush the pits and you cannot do that. There is a small amount of poison in all fruit but by steaming and stirring no pits are crushed. Wine making is longer exposure but mush more diluted by water.
The yeast is mostly done moving in a few days.
Great job on growing those cherries its a bumper crop!
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@clarkinks
I am planning to make some wine from my cherries. Not enough this year but by next year I should have a good amount for it. Do you dilute the steamed juice with water or add anything besides yeast? Also, have you tried it dry? I cant do back sweetened wine too much sugar so worried it might be overly sour as a dry wine.
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We’re probably going to start taking some on Monday.
Again this year I removed 4’ or so and it still seems like they’re unruly.
It almost seems like the bushes are making much more foliage now than actual fruit. I suppose it could have to do with the -21 we had mid February, but generally they’ve powered through severe cold before and still made you sick of picking them!
I’m inclined to think I need to do some serious renewal pruning next spring.
I lost a branch off my ER to a storm, but she looks to be very heavy this year so the cold doesn’t slow her down 
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You could do it two ways one way is to keep the fruit whole which many do. After a few days of fermentation strain the fruit out. Yes most wine is mostly water. The higher the alcohol you want the wine to have the higher the sugar content. As an example to increase the alcohol content sometimes i use honey instead of sugar which is sweeter and gives the yeast more nutrients to eat so alcohol and co2 content are higher. Tannins are what make dry wine dryer eg. Aronia fruit. Have done whole fruit wine with wild cherries and these or as you mentioned use the steam juicer for the cherries first. The sweeter you want the wine the more sweetened juice you add back in after fermentation. Good wine is hard to make. Here is the basics Cherry Wine . One thing i do is i never make less than 5 gallon batches using a 6 gallon brewing bucket. This link has additional details Making Wine with Fruit (Blackberry-Raspberry-etc) | Bader Beer & Wine Supply . The first time a kit is worth it http://fivegallonideas.com/1-minute-wine-recipe/
So you might be wondering why 5 gallons at a time its awkward to handle and the reason is the larger the batch i made the better the wine turned out. Its just my experience others may disagree. You should have all the information and perspectives then make your own decision. Wine is like clothing everyone has a different style that fits them. A home brewary store once was selling a guy $600 worth of stuff to make wine and the guy buying it stopped me and asked me for help. I didnt know him but explained i wouldnt buy everything he was being sold. The gentleman who owned the store said yes you can make trashcan wine like that cheaply. I replied a trashcan what a great idea. The truth is there is no difference wine is wine but it must be made with love and care to get good quality. An oak barrel is a great way to age liquor and it imparts a unique flavor on it’s contents. I use a carboy made from glass because i prefer it. The initial 2 days to 1 week i prefer a 6-8 gallon plastic bucket that is food grade not a trash can to ferment the liquid. If you do use honey buy it from a local guy who sells by the gallon. Its impossible to ferment wine using honey that has had preservatives added to it. Cane sugar is much better than beet sugar from the store. I seldom drink so i seldom make wine. My wine is used for other things like vinegar, cooking, antiseptic, many other things as well.
Those cherries are looking good @IowaJer . Pruning to reduce size and rejuvinate growth seems like a great idea.
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Kept the birds off this year with a net and brown rot off by using Captan spray. Now I also need to decide what to do with them. They still need a few days to ripen and get sweeter but they taste ok fresh now.
Canada color chart:
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Dennis nice protection! thanks for the color chart. Mine are turned darker red and I was going to pick them soon. But according to the chart it is only beginning of the ripening. I will wait, looks like another month?. Birds are not bigger problem right now but will be soon when they finish the mulberries and sweet cherries.
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When they are as dark as a sweet cherry from the store they are ripe. They will still be sour when ripe and they do not all ripen at one time. Color change will happen over time with just a few ripening at first. Some of those are much closer than you think. If the sun is hot they ripen fast.
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Clark, more than half of my carmine jewel is in this color
The color changes by the day very noticeably. I was going to let them hang on the tree a bit longer. However recent consecutive rain caused the darker ones cracked. I must pick them soon or the mold will start.
My sweet cherries are still no signs if cracking.
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I probably couldn’t taste much difference between 16 and 17 brix.
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