The long awaited California Bing Cherry season is in full swing. The fruit set is abundant this tear, a bumper crop. Although this is good news for the consumer, it isn’t so good for the growers. Cherries are a pick it, pack it, sell it and consume it commodity and the grower/shippers are finding themselves with a lot of # 2 fruit which consist of double and spurs. Doubles are two cherries joined together (like Siamese twins) making it difficult to grade or size in a row. Spurs are cherries that started out as a double, but one half dried up leaving a “spur” on one side of the cherry. Although these cherries are not the prettiest of the crop, they certainly have all the flavor and crunch of a graded Bing. The growers obviously prefer perfectly round large sized cherries because they can export them for big bucks, especially to Japan where, kid you not, a vendor can get up to $5.00 per cherry.
My recent visit to a San Joaquin Valley grower showed me the packing sizes inside and out. In the old days they were graded by how many cherries fit in a row of a standard flat lug crate. If 10 fit in a row the size of the cherry was larger than if 11 or 12 fitted in a row. This is the packing norm in the produce world. Every item has a standard size container - the smaller the number the larger the fruit, the larger the number, the smaller the fruit. If there are 9 cantaloupes in a standard box, then they a pretty large cantaloupes, If there are 23 cantaloupes in a standard box, then they are small cantaloupes.
So with cherries a 10-11 row size seems to be the supermarket norm while 8 row and larger are sent to foreign soil.

California supplies the entire country with fresh commercial production and ships cherries all over the world. Japan and Taiwan are the biggest customers, Canada and Mexico on this continent, and depending on European crops, Italy & Germany jumps in.

Australia is the latest player in the game. California Cherries are the only U.S. fruit approved to enter the country. Of course there are pockets of production all over that country that produce local cherries for roadside stands and specialty stores in the area, but California and the Northwest are the largest commercial producers with Michigan trailing right behind.
This year the freezing, cold and dry winter that did so much damage to the citrus industry, did exactly the opposite to the stone fruit industry and California Bings were not left out.

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decreases in mid-June, the Washington crop takes the wheel and usually stays with us through July.

Every chef has their favorite cherry recipes, a few of this produce man’s favorites are very simple; adding to fruit salad or some thick Greek yogurt or a cobbler with peaches and berries, but best ever in my opinion is just popping them into my mouth and spitting out the pit! - Cherry pit spitting contest? Nah! What a mess, but not to the folks in Eau Claire Michigan. They take it pretty seriously. Every July they hold the International Cherry Pit Spitting Contest. Folks from around the world participate complete with a Pit Spitting Handbook and a set of very serious rules. It is a huge event… Maybe that’s how orchards were planted thousands of cherry seasons ago.

Workers sorting cherries at a packing shed in
Waterloo, 4 mi east of Stcktom.

Selection
When selecting Bing cherries at your local produce stand, look for dark red to almost black, but still firm with fresh green stems; they should be shiny and not stick together.
Avoid soft and "leaky" cherries, remember, when they are starting to go bad they are bad! Avoid cherries that are sticky, mushy and dull with loose dried up brown stems. These cherries are on their way out!

Storage
Keep fresh cherries in a plastic or paper bag unwashed in the coldest area of your refrigerator. They will keep for up to 3 days and then start to soften. Do not wash your cherries until you are ready to eat or prepare them. Cherries absorb water through their skin and washing them prior to storage will cause them to break down fast.

Nutrition
Cherries are loaded with Vitamin C and dietary fiber. They contain 300 mg of Potassium along with 2% Vitamin A, Iron, and calcium.

A bit of History
Cherries were discovered on the southern region of the Black Sea and introduced to Rome around 60 BC. They instantly gained recognizable popularity and were eventually introduced to other provinces including Germany, Belgium and later to Britain. Finally French colonists brought them to the Great Lakes area of Michigan, but it wasn’t until the1860’s when a grower named his newly grafted cherry variety after his work crew foreman named “Bing” and from there “It’s History.”