My wife’s and daughter’s favorite is Sandra Rose. My other daughter’s and mine is Utah Giant. Rainier is a close 2nd for me and Sandra Rose for her. Neighbor friend said her’s was Sandra Rose or Stark Gold. What’s yours?
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Looks very nice. Rainier and Utah Giant look beefy and way bigger than the ones usually sold in grocery stores.
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I dearly love Rainier cherries. There is something about their flavor that I am not sure how to adequately describe. I think of it as a “brighter” flavor than that of the red cherries such as Bing. Plus they are very crisp. I don’t grow them, but I have had farmer’s market Rainiers with brix readings in the high 20’s and low 30’s - a real treat!
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I prefer Montmorency pie cherries for fresh eating. They just have so much more flavor than sweet cherries. There are other pie cherries that taste as good as Montmorency, but I’ve never found one that came close to its productivity. I do like Bing cherries, though.
John S
PDX OR
4 Likes
We had the opportunity to visit Andy’s Orchard for cherry tasting on Father’s Day and of the 40+ varieties, my favorites were:
- Ebony Pearl
- Burgundy pearl
- Coral
Other Great cherries:
Garnet
Radiance Pearl
Sandra Rose
Early Robin
Brooks
I wasn’t planning on buying cherry trees for my orchard, but I ended up pre-ordering ebony pearl and burgundy pearl trees for next year. Fantastic cherries with crunchy texture and complex flavors.
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I was able to drop by the farmer’s market today and pick up some cherries. Got Rainiers from two different sellers and Cristobalina from a third. I normally just stick to Rainiers, but those Cristobalinas looked really good and I haven’t tried them before. One vendor had very large, lighter colored Rainiers, another had smaller, redder Rainiers. I figured the smaller ones got more sun and/or less water, and would be better and that this would make for an interesting experiment.
Two cherries from each vendor below:
Two Rainiers on the left were 23 and 25 brix.
Two Rainiers in the middle were 27 and 28 brix.
Two Cristobalinas on the right were both 21 brix.
The Cristobalinas were incredibly dark. The camera is picking up more red than my eyes do. They are very good, but not as firm as the Rainiers.
6 Likes
The Cristobalinas look the right shape and colour, but not entirely sure if they too big. Mine are really quite small, but very flavourful.
I also recall the stems having a reddish colour to them