Festive food: Rich-red and seriously tasty

Bad weather means that cherry lovers can look forward to a longer picking season. Picture / Carolyn Elliott

Cherry lovers rejoice. If you are not fussy about the variety or where your favoured fruit has been grown, you are in for a long eating season.

In deepest Central Otago, where the rain is not usually plentiful and the summer heat can be extreme, an unusual cold spell has slowed the ripening of many varieties.

It is almost Christmas and the trees are laden, but the fruit is still green. Fruit from other areas - Hawkes Bay and Marlborough - is already available.

It's a pain, says cherry industry stalwart Earnscy Weaver, but it does mean the New Zealand cherry lover will be catered for right through to the end of February.
In the blocks between Alexandra and Cromwell - where Mr Weaver's learned his trade - the bird nets are going up and the rain clouds are being scrutinised. Birds and rain can wipe out an entire crop before the grower can do much about it.

Birds will eat the cherries the second they are ripe. Rain ruins the fruit by making the flesh soft, which then expands and cracks the skin.

Various ways of reducing rain damage have been and are being tested, including spraying a calcium mix onto the fruit once the rain starts, to draw the moisture off. That reduces skin cracks about 50 per cent but there are risks in applying too much or too little of the chemical.

Covers are another option but shielding the fruit with rain-resistant material can sometimes alter the cherry quality by sending the humidity soaring.

"The jury's still out on covers. Overall it is a risky crop but that's all part of the game," says Mr Weaver.

"When you get a good crop it pays very well, so it's probably a worthwhile risk every year."

For the Central Otago region alone the payoff amounts to about $15 million a year.

A tree will take four years of growth before it starts producing fruit, but some varieties deliver cherries for 30 or 40 years.

But consumer tastes change, which means new varieties are planted and grown regularly.

Fruit lovers want bigger, juicier cherries than 10 years ago, which has pushed the average diameter up from 24mm to 28mm.

"We want a two-bite cherry now. Not just a tiddler that's gone before you even taste it," says Mr Weaver.

The cherry is a fruit that does not ripen any more once it is removed from the tree, so picking is a fine art.

To measure the right time, growers use a refractometer to test the sweetness of the juice. The hand-held machine looks similar to a thermometer and requires the juice of half a cherry to be squashed into it.

"Taste is another way, of course, and it's a good thing I like cherries because I've done a whole lot of tasting over the years," Mr Weaver says.

The main Central Otago crop is usually picked in the days before Christmas, but this year it will be closer to New Year.

Pickers are an itinerant bunch - travellers and students looking for seasonal money.

But many underestimate the difficulty of the job and Mr Weaver says it is common to lose a quarter of the staff quickly.

Those who can go the distance are paid by the kilo and make up to $200 a day depending on the boss' generosity. Picking involves climbing ladders to get to the top fruit, but since trees are smaller these days the ladders are no longer as high as 3.6m, but more likely to be about 2.1m.

Every 5kg bucket of cherries filled is transferred to cases in the packhouse and put through the first session of hydro-cooling to remove heat the fruit retains from the sun.

Once the temperature comes down to 2C, the fruit is washed again then packed into the boxes it will travel in.

About 60 per cent of the New Zealand crop is exported, and 70 per cent of that goes to Taiwan.

On the export market New Zealand growers compete with Chilean, South African and Tasmanian crops. All have their merits, Mr Weaver says, but really cannot compete with the Kiwi cherries.

Even after 45 years of experience he says he has no real favourite variety. Any crisp, fat cherry will do.

"You want it to snap like an apple - that's the real test of eating good fruit as far as I can tell. That's what I tell the growers around here anyway."

Cherry prices (Per kilogram)

Auckland

Countdown, Mt Wellington - $24.99.
Pak'N Save, Mt Albert - $19.99.
Woolworths, Milford - $24.99.

Blenheim

Cherryland - $8 to $16 (1st grade, 2nd grade, pick-your-own).
Scalloway Cherries - $17.50 for bulk delivery, $21 for normal.
Roxburgh Fairview Orchard - $10 to $12.