With my ailing foot, harvesting the fruit and veg is something I can get my teeth into and that is exactly what I do with the Japanese Wineberries (Rubus phoenicolasius). There is something magical about popping these small, sticky, ruby coloured clusters of unctuousness into your mouth, straight from the pink, prickly stems. Not many of these delicate little fruits make it back to the kitchen but this season’s crop is the best we have seen, so there is a bowl of them in the fridge to have with our muesli tomorrow. And there are lots more to ripen.
Wineberries are an unusual fruit with a glossy appearance and a definite sweet red wine taste. They are exotic in their appeal but are remarkably easy to grow – either in full sun or partial shade. They are similar to summer fruiting raspberries in that they fruit on the previous year’s growth. Unlike raspberries though the canes are long and arching – so we tie them into a trellis but if you have the space you can let them run free, though they will not be well behaved! If you bend a stem to the ground and weight it down with a stone, it will root very easily.
You can use wineberries in cooking as you would raspberries, but we never do. They have such a wow factor that we think they are best served as they are. I can never understand why more people don’t grow them.
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