Black Sour Cherry Wisniac

 

What is black cherry wisniak?

Wisniak Cherry

Wisniak is the best and most popular semi-sweet cherry liqueur (with a low alcohol content) in Poland. Wisniak is made from fresh cherries with natural flavor and fragrance. Wisniak has a pleasing, mild bouquet, sweet cherry taste and noticeable flavor of almonds. It can be served straight or as a component of cocktails. It is highly appreciated by ladies who avoid strong alcoholic drinks. Best served at room temperature in liqueur glasses with coffee and desserts. (well that’s what Answers.com says about it)

What is this all about Greg? Huh?!  Well shut up and let me tell you.  Very dear friends of mine (we’ll call them Anna and Richard) had me over their place some time ago and treated me to a home made Wisniak.  I was like DAAAAAAMN!  How do you make this?  And they told me.  (I’m still deciding on sharing that info with you all.)  So a while back we all talked about going upstate to do some black sour cherry picking so we can make new batches.  Mom came along as well cause she just loves the outdoors (and made me feel like a turtle picking cherries cause she’s so damn quick) and is always itching to make something home made.  On the 14th of July we headed upstate about 2+ hrs N of NYC to a farm (not telling ya which) to do some cherry picking.  We grabbed a couple of buckets not knowing how much will actually fit.  Well, the recipe called for about 2kilos of cherries, and 2 smallish buckets will carry about  oooh, I dunno…about 33LBS!   DOH!  Let’s just say that I did some recalculating while making the wisniac.  This is the first time that I remember ever going to a farm to pick anything. Mom said she took me when I was really young, but I can’t remember   We got there quite early, say…8ish? There were about 8cars already parked there and people already stealing from us!  OK, they weren’t, but it felt like it.   There was an advantage for us of me being there, my height.  I was told I could grab the tops of the tree and bend them over to get at all the cherries at the top.  And I did.  There were a few occasions were all 4 of us gathered around a tree, I stood on my toes and grabbed the highest part of the tree I could reach and bend it down.  The rest of our group started picking at the tree hungrily like vultures on some roadkill. EW!  Well, kinda sorta like that.  We did clean some trees right up, picking every bit off.  The season started on a Wednesday, we got there Thur and were then notified the season of picking ended on Fri.  3 days for all their trees to be picked off.  I can’t even imagine how many pounds that totaled over the 3 days and at $2 a lb?   I thing they made a killing.  It’s good to be a farmer?

Here some pics.

so darn good, gotta eat them right off the tree!

Mom and her cherry earrings.

Anna/Richard

She couldn’t resist eating from the tree either. 

And here is a pic from the fruits of our labor

Anna and Richard had picked cherries for some of their friends as well.

 

It was a great day,  I thought it would have taken longer to pick the cherries but with Speedy Gonzalez for a mom we were done in no time.   After your done, you walk back to a little station and place your buckets on a scale and pay for it all.  You pay by the pound, it was $2 per. We also picked up a few other goodies that the farm was selling on the way out.  I bought a jar of cherry jam and mom some other fruits and some honey.

I bought it for myself but mom and dad almost finished it on me before I even got the chance to taste it.  I stole the rest from them and now I keep an eye out to make sure they don’t steal it back.

 

A few more pics of the farm.

 

On the next blog update I’ll show you what we did to prepare and make this stuff. 

 

till then