Plum Juice: Taste, Ingredients, Preserving for Winter and What to Pair It With

Plums are easy to recognize by their bluish bloom, and you might think their juice should be blue, but our plum juice is a delicate pink. It contains 30% not-from-concentrate (NFC) plum juice; the rest is apple juice from our orchard. It tastes mellow at first, with a deep plum sweetness in the aftertaste. The texture is slightly denser than that of apple juice, and when it’s chilled, the plum flavor is fuller.

Contents

• Where the bluish bloom on plums comes from
• Plum, cherry plum and blackthorn: who’s related to whom
• Plums in the washer: how we make the juice
• Ingredients and nutritional value
• How to make plum juice at home and preserve it for winter
• Plum juice in the glass and in the kitchen: 3 ideas
• Frequently asked questions

Where the bluish bloom on plums comes from

The bluish bloom on plums isn’t dust but a natural wax that the plum produces itself. Its tiny particles scatter light — in much the same way that the sky looks blue — and so the plum appears blue. Just rub it with your finger and the blue disappears, yet you can’t wash the bloom off with water. Growers consider it a sign of freshness.

Under the bloom is a dark skin, and that is where the plum’s pigments are concentrated, while the flesh of Hungarian-type plums is yellowish-green. That’s why our juice is pink rather than blue.

Plum, cherry plum and blackthorn: who’s related to whom

The European plum is most likely the offspring of the cherry plum and the blackthorn: that’s what the genetic data say, and no reliably confirmed wild stands of the plum itself have been found to this day. Its homeland is believed to be the region south of the Caucasus, between the Black and Caspian Seas.

Archaeologists find pits of the plum and its wild relatives — cherry plum and blackthorn — at Neolithic sites in Germany and Ukraine dating from 6000–4000 BC. The word itself is old, too: “slyva” (plum) is Proto-Slavic, and linguists mostly explain it as a name for a bluish color (compare Latin līvor, “a bluish tint”). And in some Ukrainian dialects, a dyed Easter egg was called a “slyvka,” and “slyvyty” meant to paint pysanky, decorated Easter eggs.

Plums in the washer: how we make the juice

We press the plum juice ourselves, separately from the apples, blend it with the apple juice later, and pasteurize the blend just before packaging. The bluish bloom doesn’t wash off even in the washer: the plums stay bluish even under water.

Ingredients and nutritional value

Fresh-pressed apple-plum juice is made from two direct-pressed juices: 70% apple and 30% plum. Only our pear juice has a larger share of the second fruit.

Pure plum juice usually contains even more sugar than apple juice, but quite a lot of acid as well. That’s why plum is more often sold as a nectar than as a juice — how nectar falls short of juice is explained in our article on juice, reconstituted juice (from concentrate) and nectar.

How to make plum juice at home and preserve it for winter

For homemade juice, people use ripe plums whose pits come away easily, like Hungarian-type plums. Plums give up their juice reluctantly in a juicer: the tender flesh easily turns into purée. That’s why people more often make juice with pulp — soft, overripe plums work well for it, too — or use a steam juicer. It is preserved for winter the same way as apple juice.

Plum juice in the glass and in the kitchen: 3 ideas

1. Rosemary spritz

Reduce 200 ml of juice by half with a sprig of rosemary and let it cool. Pour 50 ml of this base and 150 ml of sparkling water into a glass with ice, and add a fresh sprig of rosemary.

2. Farmer’s cheese cream for crepes and dumplings

Blend 200 g of soft farmer’s cheese with 60 ml of juice and a teaspoon of honey. You’ll get a pink cream without any cooking — for crepes, farmer’s cheese pancakes or plum dumplings. You can sprinkle chopped walnuts on top.

3. With vanilla ice cream

Put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a tall glass and slowly pour 200 ml of cold juice over it. You’ll get a delicate dessert drink: first you sip it through a straw, then finish the ice cream with a spoon. Instead of vanilla, a rich, creamy plombir works too.

For a no-bake Sunday dessert, all you need is a glass of plum juice and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

You can order fresh-pressed apple-plum 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. How we make our juices is covered in “Fresh Apple Juice: How We Make It”; how to open the box and how long it keeps, in “Juice in a Bag-in-Box with a Tap”.
Order fresh-pressed apple-plum juice →