Thank goodness currants are so waterproof, unlike a raspberry, which never met a drop of moisture that didn’t turn it into mush. In a waterlogged season like this one the currants swell marvelously, turn red or dark purple, depending on the variety, and hang patiently, shiny and brilliant, for a couple of weeks until I harvest them.
We grow both red and black currants, two bushes of reds and one of black. We ought not grow any at all because they are banned in Maine and most Northern states. Old timers will remember the concerted effort made back in the early 1900s to uproot all currants and gooseberries to interrupt the white pine blister rust cycle.
The genus ribes is an intermediary host for the rust and when white pine was an important forestry product, most places attempted to protect it by outlawing the old fashioned fruits. My grandmother cried the day she had to give up her gooseberries.
These currants must not be confused with dried Zante currants that we use in scones or currant cake. Those are actually a grape, and the name is a corruption of the word designating their location, Corinth, in Greece. Settlers brought berry currants, one among hundreds of favorite food plants and trees, here to New England in colonial times.
In early 19th century Augusta, midwife Martha Ballard mentioned currant picking in her voluminous diary: all through late July and early August, neighbors come to gather cherries and currants in exchange for items they bring her. On August 9, 1806, Martha reports that she baked bread and made currant tarts. On August 6, 1807, she writes, “I have Stript & put down in Sugar 11 qts Currents this day.” In September she speaks of her son taking a couple of bottles of currant wine to his brother’s house. Hot and cold running currants.
You can’t buy currant plants in Maine today, but there are lots of them growing here. I spent one simply lovely evening on a Midcoast peninsula not far from here picking red currants off a heavily laden bush with a woman whose 90-year-old mother still liked to make jelly. The next morning we sat in the older woman’s kitchen stripping the berries from their stems into a bowl while she spoke of older days.
Another friend has two or three handsome black currant bushes as tall as I am in her city yard that she picks from. Friends brought me my bushes from states where they can be sold and I have planted them near fruit trees. Not too far away are white pines. So far, no rust. Meanwhile jam, jelly, juice, cassis, and if only I can get the hang of it, wine.
The black currants are opaque, deep purple, nearly black. The plant has sturdy upright branches. The fruit is resinous, strongly flavored and makes the best cassis. I soak the berries in vodka for a few weeks, strain it through cheesecloth then add an equal proportion of sugar. I heat it until the sugar dissolves, then I add a little more spirit. It is an elegant drink as an aperitif, mixed with white wine for Kir or with champagne for Kir Royal. We have it sometimes merely as an after-dinner liqueur. Although I love the flavor myself, black currants in jelly take a bit of getting used to so more people seem to like red currants better for that.
Our red currants grow on shorter bushes, whose branches spring up when I relieve them of the fruit. The reds are translucent, grow in brilliant little red clusters, any two of which would make a pair of stunning earrings. When I sit by the bush so that the berries are backlit by sunshine, I become ridiculously entranced, rapturous even. I dearly love my currants.
Red currant jelly is lovely on toast or in thumb print cookies, or melted as a glaze for tarts or a sauce for ice cream or cottage pudding. It is excellent as juice, sweetened to taste with a simple syrup of sugar and water, and made fizzy with club soda. I can make quarts and quarts of it in the steam juicer. With all that brilliant color it must have antioxidants in it, though I would enjoy even if it wasn’t also good for me.
Red currants can get the vodka treatment, too, and red currant cassis is pleasant. I have done them in brandy, sweetened later into a liqueur. I am toying with the idea of currant sorbet. What I really need to learn though is how to make currant wine, for which the red currants would be ideal. I turned over five pounds of red currants to a friend who made six or more bottles of wine out of it. Last year we harvested twenty-six pounds of berries off our two bushes. We could easily grow a hundred bushes on our land, which would be gallons and gallons of wine. Certainly enough to cheer up our community for days.
Currants are the perfect island fruit. I’ve seldom seen it fail that as soon as raspberries are ripe along the coast that the fog rolls in and the berries turn fuzzy with mold. Currants can take rain, fog, chilly weather; their skins shed moisture like foul weather gear. Like islanders, they are tough and persistent. And there is no significant commercial white pines stands on islands and miles of open water between us and the nearest one. Maybe in time, currants can become a valuable commodity, outstripping white pine, and we can get that ban overturned.