John Myers
As the name suggests, the most significant difference between sweet cherries and tart cherries is the taste of each fruit. There are two different subspecies of the cherry from the rose family, which in turn can be divided into several hundred different varieties. The sour cherry contains more fruit acid and is therefore more suitable for cooking, baking and canning. The sweet cherry is mainly eaten raw because of its sweet aroma. Sweet and sour cherries are characterized by a balanced mix of vitamins. In addition to vitamins C and E, stone fruits contain healthy B vitamins and provitamin A. The red pigments also have an anti-inflammatory effect.
A sweet cherry is understood to mean various cultivated forms of the wild bird cherry, such as the cartilaginous cherry with firm, sweet flesh or the heart cherry, which is characterized by soft, juicy and also sweet flesh. There are around 500 different types of sweet cherries in total. A sweet cherry tree can grow between 15 and 30 meters high. In high-yield cultivation, the cherry trees usually become significantly smaller due to the choice of variety and the rootstocks used, in order to facilitate harvesting and cultivation measures on the trees. This is a great way to get the fruit for our cherry soup during the season.
Sour cherries grow in the form of trees or bushes that, in contrast to sweet cherry varieties, only grow up to 10 meters in height. A total of around 250 different types of sour cherries have been cultivated, the most well-known of which is the morello cherry. The name of this sour cherry is a linguistic distortion of its French place of origin. The name has nothing to do with shade, but is derived from Château de Moreille.
In addition to sweet cherries and sour cherries, there are also hybrids of both varieties: so-called “bastard cherries” combine characteristics of both trees. These cherries are characterized by a mixed sweet and sour aroma, but they play a much smaller role in the fruit trade.
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