Uncommon Crop Cider - Sapalta Cherry Plums

About

Cherry plums are a cross between cherries and plums, and Sapalta was the variety that was grown at Carandale Fruit Farm and used in this project. Cherry plums have some of the characteristics of both cherries and plums, and their size is roughly in between. The Sapalta cherry plums have a strong, tart, slightly tannic flavor, and a rich, red, juicy flesh.

Growing Cherry Plums

Carandale Fruit Farm has had some success growing Sapalta cherry plums. They have been productive and relatively disease and pest resistant. You can read more about cherry plums and Carandale Fruit Farm’s experience growing them here: http://uncommonfruit.cias.wisc.edu/?p=375

Making the Cider

We have made cider with plums and with cherries, and in many ways, the Sapalta cherry plum acts like the hybrid that it is. We made the cider by freezing the plums, pressing some juice out from them after thawing, and then adding both the juice and the skins to the cider. The juice pressed out a rich red color, and it was quite tart. We back sweetened the cider with just a little honey to balance some of the acidity that the cherry plums imparted.

Drinking the Cider

We were quite impressed with this one. It had a lovely pinkish, red color and a juicy freshness that was hard to pinpoint. It didn’t taste much like cherries or plums traditionally would. It was almost like a fruit punch, but in a good way. It had a nice brisk acidity and just enough tannin to give it some backbone, drying your mouth at the finish and making you want another sip. We had it available at the end of summer, and on a hot day it was wonderfully refreshing. It was very popular and sold out quickly. In the consumer tasting survey it scored an 8 out of 10, making it the second highest scoring of all the uncommon crops that we tested.

Conclusions

This one is a winner for sure. It seemed to hit all the marks in that it doesn’t appear to be terribly hard to grow or process and in that it made a really great drink, with a lovely color and a bright, brisk, lively, full bodied flavor. Go out and plant some Sapalta cherry plums!