AS the durian season comes to a close, another fruit is making its way center stage: Northwest Cherries! With the cherry season taking over, the Northwest Cherry Growers launched a campaign recently dubbed ‘Cherish the Moments’, to mark the harvest season that is expected to run all the way up to mid-August.
True to its name, the campaign aims to encourage the public to cherish precious moments with loved ones while enjoying the sweetness of the highly nutritional and flavourful cherries.
According to Malaysia’s Northwest Cherries market representative Retna Malar, although some of the cherry-growing regions were impacted due to weather complications of snow during spring, which resulted in lower volume of cherries, the upside is that the quality of the fruit ended up being one of the best in recent years.
“Not only are they larger in size, but the (harvested cherries) are sweeter, crunchier and more succulent,” Malar noted.
Apart from having immense flavour packed in such a small form, cherries are known as the ‘Diamond of Fruit’ due to its nutritional value.
This particular fruit has high contents of potassium, Vitamin C and anti-inflammatory properties that helps in preventing or reducing the risk or severity of several chronic inflammatory diseases. These are just a few of many other beneficial nutrients that cherries can provide!
The term ‘Diamond of Fruit’ also comes from the long-haul process involved in guaranteeing only the best quality of cherries are harvested in the end. With the growing process taking about 12-months from start to finish, the process usually starts in the winter season before they grow into clusters of snackable fruits in the summer.
In fact, Malar also emphasised this fact by stating that the Northwest Cherries are of high quality and hold great value due to its limited availability.
While sweet cherries are grown all over the world, the best varieties are handpicked by growers to produce best quality yield and suits their climate conditions.
Dark cherry varieties such as Chelan, Lapin, Skeena, Santina and the world-famous Bing are available throughout the season and interchanges as the season progresses, while the white varieties such as Early Robins and Rainers are available from June to July.
Although cherries are very seasonal, they can still be enjoyed outside of the cherry season, as they can be stores in freezers by washing, pitting and placing them in freezer bags or keeping it frozen for as long as six months!
Stressing on the importance of purchasing the Northwest Cherries quickly this time around due to its limited availability, Malar added: “Not everyone is able to get that second bite of the cherry so don’t miss out on the opportunity to get a hold of them before it’s too late.”
The Northwest Cherries are available in participating supermarkets and retailers such as AEON, Jaya Grocer, Village Grocer, Ben’s Independent Grocers, Cold Storage, Mercato, Lotuss, Giant, AEON Big, TF Value-Mart and NSK.
They can also be purchased online on platforms such as Lazada, Shopee and Hantar Fresh.
Northwest Cherry Growers is represented by over 2,500 growers from the Pacific Northwest states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Montana. Together, they produce on average year around 400,000MT of cherries. – July 20, 2022
