It is high summer and ordinarily our weekends and evenings would be peppered with meals outside. There should be a creeping smugness about the daily haul of strawberries. I should be in danger of growing floppy ears, given the basinfuls of salad leaves we are eating. But no. High summer? Mostly, it feels like October.
Every rare sunny hour feels precious, and last weekend, between one shower and the next, we set about the blackcurrant bushes. Branch-bendingly heavy with fruit, the currants have thrived as almost everything else has suffered. A welcome victory in this limp impersonation of summer.
Their flavour seems particularly special this year – perhaps, I’d wondered, due to a gentler-than-usual ripening. Checking last year’s diary, though, I noticed how bowled over I was by the delicious blackcurrants then, too. Home-grown currants are so good, they surpass even the happiest memory of them. This is largely because you can pick them at the moment when the perfect balance between sharp and sweet has been struck.
You can also choose the finest varieties. Any with Ben in their name can be relied on for flavour. 'Ben Lomond’ is noticeably larger in fruit and later flowering; perfect for those in areas liable to a late frost.
The other plus for the newer Ben varieties is that the strigs (dangling bunches of fruit) ripen and can be harvested together, whereas with many older varieties, the currants ripen randomly across the bush. 'Ebony’ is the choice for an early picking, but 'Titania’ won our taste test this year. This is large, juicy, aromatic and deliciously sweet, without losing that edge of sharpness that makes a blackcurrant so special.
Growing your own blackcurrants also makes sense economically. Order a bare root plant now for autumn delivery for around a fiver and it will be productive for years. We plucked more than a kilo of juicy, full-flavoured fruit from each bush, while a kilo of blackcurrants costs a tenner or more in the shops.
You also have the pleasure of one of the great secondary harvests – the leaves. Most herb or fruit teas remind me of aromatic Tippex, but a few dried blackcurrant leaves, with or without honey or lemon verbena leaves, are a bit special. Better still, try blackcurrant leaf sorbet. I know: it sounds as appealing as nettle ice cream, but the worst you’re gambling is finding out how fabulous this is. It only uses a little sugar and the juice of a few lemons. Make it once and you’ll make it every year.
Currant affairs
Blackcurrants are ridiculously easy to care for. Plant them in the sunniest, most fertile position you can and they’ll be at their best. Mine thrive in a slightly damp area too. Allow them 1.5m/5ft to stretch their arms wide and high, water them through dry periods and mulch them with manure as winter gives way to spring. You’ll be rolling in fruit by midsummer.
Once established, you need only prune out the oldest third of each bush to encourage productive new growth and keep the plant healthy. You can do this in winter, or kill three birds with one stone by doing it in summer when the currants are ripe. Snip out the oldest branches as low as you can, and place them in a vase of water, from where you can pull off the currants and leaves as you need them.
Do not imagine that the local wildlife is ignoring your fruit. Birds know that the moment for perfect picking is worth waiting for. And as with most fruit, that moment is later than you think. Wait for the colour to deepen and let them alone a little longer still. Taste regularly, as sweetness escalates by the day. If there is no net around your fruit, the birds will let you know when the perfect moment is and your plants will be stripped in a short time.
Find space for red and white currants too. Although neither has the same aroma and in-your-face flavour of blackcurrants, both are quietly delicious, easy to care for and hard to come by in the shops. Perfect made into jelly to go with meat and cheese, they tend to excel in a supporting role. I had an incredible tayberry and redcurrant jam last week (from withherhands.com). Summer pudding, in all its simplicity, is hard to beat.
As with blackcurrants, white and redcurrants freeze well, so you can enjoy them at any time of year. We freeze them in yogurt pots that hold around 250-300g. A couple of these happen to be enough for the recipes. With a few left to nibble on, of course.
