Cherry Juice: Taste, Ingredients, and How It Differs from Nectar

Most of what stands on store shelves under the name “cherry” is nectar: sour cherries on their own are too tart, so their juice is diluted with water and sweetened. Our cherry juice is different — it is not-from-concentrate (NFC) juice with one part cherry juice to every nine parts of juice from the apples of our orchard. It tastes like homemade cherry kompot, only richer: the apple softens the cherry’s tartness but doesn’t hide it.

Contents

• Sklianky and griottes: not every cherry has red juice
• “A Cherry Orchard by the House”: cherries in Ukraine
• Cherries in summer, apples in fall: how we make the juice
• Ingredients and nutritional value
• Cherry juice, nectar, and kompot: what’s the difference
• How to make cherry juice at home and for winter
• What to make with cherry juice: 4 ideas
• Frequently asked questions

Sklianky and griottes: not every cherry has red juice

Not all cherries give red juice. Old Ukrainian pomology distinguished, among others, “sklianky” — sour cherries with colorless or pale pink juice — and dark, almost black “griottes,” whose juice is richly colored.

And the common sour cherry itself was created not by people but by nature: it is a hybrid of close relatives of the sweet cherry and the steppe cherry.

“A Cherry Orchard by the House”: cherries in Ukraine

Taras Shevchenko wrote the poem “A cherry orchard by the house…” in May 1847 while under arrest in St. Petersburg: the quiet picture of an evening in the orchard took shape in a prison cell.

An orchard by the house is not just a poetic image. According to a 2017 estimate by the Ukrsadprom association, most of Ukraine’s sour cherry and sweet cherry harvest is gathered on household farms, while commercial orchards account for only 2–4%.

Cherries in summer, apples in fall: how we make the juice

Sour cherries ripen in late June and in July, several months before our apples, and we press them ourselves while it is still summer, storing the juice until the new apple harvest. In the fall, when the apples ripen too, we combine the two juices and pasteurize them right before filling. Last year’s cherry juice sold out quickly, so now we have made more of it.

Ingredients and nutritional value

The ingredients of apple-cherry juice are simple: direct-pressed apple and cherry juices. The apple base is the same as in our apple juice.

Cherry juice, nectar, and kompot: what’s the difference

On the store shelf, cherry juice, cherry nectar, and cherry drink stand side by side, and at home there is also kompot. Here is how they differ:

• Cherry juice is juice from the fruit: direct-pressed or reconstituted from concentrate. No sugar, honey, or sweeteners are added to it.
• Cherry nectar is juice or puree diluted with water. It is often sweetened as well: sugar or honey may be added up to 20% of the drink’s weight. Nectar has a weaker taste, and its sweetness does not come from fruit alone.
• Cherry kompot is a homemade genre of its own: the cherries are boiled in water with sugar, so it is lighter and sweeter.

To be sure you are buying juice, check the name (“juice,” not “nectar” or “drink”), look for the words “not from concentrate,” and read the ingredients. Our article “NFC Juice, Reconstituted Juice, and Nectar” goes into more detail.

How to make cherry juice at home and for winter

At home, cherries are easiest to juice in a steam juicer: the steam makes them release their juice on their own. To squeeze juice from cherries in a juicer, you remove the pits first. The juice comes out sharp, so it is often diluted with water and sweetened — essentially, a homemade nectar. There is another way to soften the tartness: mix the cherry juice with apple juice, as we do. It is heated and canned the same way as apple juice for winter.

What to make with cherry juice: 4 ideas

1. Cherry kissel

Dissolve 2 tablespoons of potato starch in 100 ml of cold juice. Heat another 400 ml of juice almost to a boil, pour in the starch in a thin stream, stirring constantly, and keep heating until the kissel thickens. Serve warm or cold.

2. Soak for a sponge cake

For a cherry cake, soak the sponge layers with cold juice — 3–4 tablespoons per layer 20–22 cm in diameter. The juice will give the sponge a cherry aroma and a light tartness that balances the sweet cream.

3. Half-and-half with pear

In a pitcher, mix 500 ml each of apple-cherry and apple-pear juice: slightly tart cherry and honeyed pear together taste like a berry dessert. Why pear is so sweet is explained in our article on pear juice.

4. Non-alcoholic mulled wine

Put 3 cardamom pods, a cinnamon stick, and a strip of orange zest in a saucepan and pour in 1 L of juice. Heat until steam appears above the juice, take it off the heat, cover with a lid, and wait 10 minutes. More recipes are in our article on non-alcoholic mulled wine, and a deeper taste comes from grape juice.

If you like cherry with character, add pear juice to your order and mix the two half-and-half.

You can order fresh-pressed apple-cherry juice, 3 L, on our website. The minimum order is two boxes, and you can mix flavors; all our juices are in the “Juices” section. We ship within 1–2 business days via Nova Poshta and Ukrposhta across Ukraine. Our article “Fresh Apple Juice: How We Make It” explains how we make our juices, and “Juice in a Bag-in-Box with a Tap” shows how to open the box and how long it keeps.
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