When: July 11
National Rainier Cherries Day on July 11th celebrates what many consider the finest cherry variety in the world — a yellow-red cherry with translucent flesh, low acidity, and a honey-sweet flavor that has nothing in common with the dark Bing cherries most people think of as the default. Rainiers are fragile, seasonal, expensive, and worth every penny.
Rainier cherries have a three-week season and bruise so easily they can't be machine-harvested — every one you eat was picked by hand.
In 1952, a horticulturalist at Washington State University named Harold Fogle crossed two cherry varieties — the Bing and the Van — and produced something he hadn't quite anticipated: a cherry with yellow skin blushed red, translucent flesh, and a sweetness that neither parent had quite achieved. He named it for the mountain visible from Washington's cherry country. The Rainier cherry was released commercially in 1960 and has been considered one of the finest cherries in the world ever since. The unusual appearance comes from low anthocyanin content. Most cherries are dark red because anthocyanins — the pigments that color many fruits — accumulate as the fruit ripens. Rainiers have far less of these pigments, which produces the golden color and also affects the flavor: anthocyanins carry a slight astringency that dark cherries have and Rainiers don't. The sweetness is nearly unobstructed. The growing difficulty is proportional to the quality. Rainier cherry skin is thin enough that...