Really wonder if they’ll be able to recover them.
“Bradburn added that the organization’s team is hopeful the cherry pits may be viable for future germination.”
35 bottles from the 18th century filled with cherries unearthed by archeologists at George Washington’s Mount Vernon
THank you for posting that. I’m a huge history buff so this is my idea of the perfect story- history and fruit!
But I have so many unanswered questions. Why would they have just put whole cherries in bottles? Wouldn’t they have spoiled within days? I could understand cherry wine, but finding whole bottles of cherries that weren’t frozen and couldn’t have been sealed well enough to prevent decay ( or maybe they could have been???) Anyone have any thoughts on what these were for? Was he going to make wine or even brandy? Wouldn’t that have to be done with the fresh cherries?
UPDATE- after researching this I finally found an article that postulates that back then, people would dry cherries in the sun and THEN put them into bottles and store in cellars. So probably these were dried cherries. Still, I;m bewildered. I read that the cherries in the bottles were mostly whole, uncut cherries still attached to stems and some even still had small branches. So how did they dry them without them spoiling? I’m sure if I just picked a quart of my montmorency cherries and put them out in the sun whole with pits and stems all still attached, they would rot long b4 they would dry. Right?
Yall gota help me figure this out!
I suspect the cherries were stored in alcohol spirits. Whiskey or some other concentrated alcohol solution. Another possibility is they were preserved in a sugar syrup but I think that is unlikely especially in that era.
You might look at this article on maraschino cherries.
Martha Washington’s famous cherry bounce of course! look it up. I’ve made it. very tasty.
brandy. 