Cherry Vodka, Revisited

More cherries, more cherry vodka.

This was a weird year for cherry growers. An overabundance of cherries near the end of the season caused the market to tank. Cherries that normally would have been picked for sale were left on the trees.

Including a lot of rainier cherries here at the orchard I’m working at.

I hate letting food go to waste. Especially amazingly delicious food. Like these slightly-past-prime-picking-time-super-sweet cherries. So I started picking in the evenings, taking home about 2 pounds a day.

There are only so many cherries a person can eat. I reached my limit.

Cherry VodkaSo I fell back on last year’s recipe for cherry vodka — or cherry liquor, as some people like to call it. So far, I’ve filled 4 pint jars and 2 other jars I’d been saving in the RV.

They look delicious. I’m very interested to see how they hold their color over the coming year. They’re best eaten — perhaps served over ice cream? — after at least 6 months in the jar. Last year’s cherries, which I blogged about here, were a mix of red and rainier cherries, but all the cherries in the jars turned dark red. They taste okay, but I probably should have added some sugar when I jarred them. This year’s are super-sweet and I don’t think sugar will be necessary.

By the way — I always use decent vodka. Most of these were made with Absolut, but I switched to my favorite, Ketel One, when I ran out.


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2 thoughts on “Cherry Vodka, Revisited

    • I wish I could sell them. Hell, there’s enough cherries in that orchard to make packing them a full time job for at least a week. After that, no one will want to eat them. The window for picking is very short. The rainiers, in fact, are past the point of picking — they’re probably fermenting on the trees right now.

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