Sweet cherry is the dessert cherry: larger, less acidic and darker than sour cherry, and bought where the fruit is visible and where a sharp acidity would be wrong. Dark varieties dominate the frozen trade because the colour survives processing and because pale fruit looks washed out after thawing. As with sour cherry the product is pitted mechanically, so the specification needs tolerances for whole pits and for fragments with a stated counting method, and the calibre band should be set by what the finished product shows rather than by habit.
Seasonality and availability
Harvest runs through June and into July. The window is short, the fruit is perishable and the freezing has to follow the picking closely, so most of the volume for a year is committed during the harvest. Product is supplied from cold store afterwards. Larger calibres sell out first, which is worth knowing if a formulation depends on a big berry.
What the buyer checks at intake
- Calibre against the specification, measured on a sieved sample.
- Whole pits and pit fragments against separate tolerances.
- Core temperature at minus eighteen degrees Celsius or colder.
- Colour on a thawed sample against a photographic reference.
- Stalks and foreign vegetable matter.
- Free-flowing behaviour and free ice.
Related standards and routes
Road reefer to central and western Europe. Certification is normally BRCGS or IFS Food, and bakery customers usually want the pitting control documented in the supplier approval pack.
