Banned fruit - the blackcurrant

A recipe for Crème de Cassis

Although so many of us still can’t travel widely on summer adventures, this time last year the most we could look forward to were balcony concerts, Zoom plays and ballets, elbowed greetings, and socially-distanced/maximum-six-guests events. 

If I’d known how long isolation was going to last, on top of my supply of face masks (the price for which will be paid by marine life and the rest of the environment), I would have invested in two megaphones. One for me, one for my Bubble-ee.

I spent those intervals in which we were allowed to sit outside in spaces 2 meters apart baffled by what my ‘bubble’ companion was saying. Face masks make me go deaf. Remove the hum of traffic and shriek of planes, and adjusting to the lack of sound caused more confusion. The muffled echo in the eardrums felt like tinnitus. Then that silence was replaced by such a joyful cacophony of liberated birds I couldn’t hear a thing unless whoever I was talking to sat close, inside my authorised isolation zone of self-and-other-protection.

This summer, those stalwart friends who last summer sighed at my talking in non sequiturs at complete cross purposes will be greeted with an apologetic and celebratory Kir. Deprived of distractions, I have been making Crème de Cassis by the gallon, in hopes of a raucous social life. 

Just in case you’re new to this uplifting aperitif, Crème de Cassis is an alcoholic version of Ribena, the blackcurrant cordial. Topped up with chilled white wine it makes a ‘Kir’. Topped up with Champagne or Crémant, it’s a ‘Kir Royale’.

Kir was invented by Canon Felix Kir, a hero of the French resistance who died in 1968 aged 92. His goal was to improve the livelihoods of the blackcurrant growers of Dijon, where he lived. 

Ribena is not a substitute. That was invented in Britain in 1938 by Dr Vernon Charley. Marketed as ‘The natural health drink of our time’, it was distributed free to children and pregnant mothers for its high Vitamin C content by the British government during the Second World War when oranges became scarce.

It lost its healthy reputation in the 2000s when it was discovered the amount of actual blackcurrants and therefore of Vitamin C, as well as levels of sugar were no longer those of the original product. Bought by one international pharmaceutical then another, it’s now owned by Japanese brewer Suntory which, in 2018, altered the recipe even further, adding artificial sweeteners - and thickeners, necessary, if you reduce the quantity of high-tax sugar, to create a syrup. Their British arm’s website confesses, “We want to revolutionise the soft drinks world.” At least now you know in what fashion they plan to do that.

Blackcurrants take their name from ‘Ribes Nigrum’, which also gives us ‘Ribena’. Russians were cultivating the deciduous shrub in monastery gardens back in the 11th century and using its leaves, bark and roots as medical remedies.

By the end of the 17th century, the growth of blackcurrants had moved across Northern Europe. While a touch of sun encourages the sipping of Kir, blackcurrants prefer a cold climate, flourishing in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Norway, Scotland and New Zealand. Their leaves are strong in flavour. A handful of them added to cream to steep will imbue it with a blackcurrant taste.

Blackcurrants are about to become available fresh in the markets. But not in the US, where the fruit for making Crème de Cassis must be foraged for in freezer cabinets. This despite the fact that in the late 1800s around 7,400 acres of land, mostly in New York State, were turned over to the growing of blackcurrants, white currants and gooseberries, each of them members of the Ribes family.

It was discovered that these bushes, imported from Europe in the 19th century, spread a fungus that could kill white pine trees, the backbone of the nation’s timber industry. In 1911, the government outlawed the commercial growth of blackcurrants and financed a programme to eradicate every Ribes bush, fitting crews with backpacks of chemical spray. They fanned out across the countryside, destroying field after field of them.

The blackcurrants themselves were not the immediate problem. In 1705, Lord Weymouth had begun to ship US white pine seedlings home to England. As these trees spread across Europe, blister rust, a parasitic fungus, appeared in Germany. In the US, white pine forests were being cut down at such a rate farmers began to import white pine tree stock back from overseas. With these, in 1909, came infected seedlings from Germany.

The problem with blister rust was that it doesn’t jump from pine to pine but requires an intermediary vector to complete its life cycle. That vector was the blackcurrant, with far less economic value than the pine.

The ban was only lifted in 2003 when horticulturist Greg Quinn worked with a number of New England senators to have it overturned. Slowly, the blackcurrant is being reintroduced, through plantings on his 135-acre farm and others in New York, Connecticut, Oregon, and Vermont. He sells them to order, fresh and frozen.

Whether you make it from fresh currants or from frozen, I do urge you to lay down some Crème de Cassis. If you’re still confined to your open window/balcony/patio/garden/country estate, a Kir will transport you, eyes closed, to your vacation fantasy destination. Add it to white wine or Prosecco or Crémant (drier, so better), or pour it over a blackcurrant or raspberry sorbet. The same recipe works with raspberries but moderate the sugar if you buy them frozen as they are usually smothered in it.

Photo Klaus Einwanger: The Bruno Cookbook, Martin Walker & Julia Watson.

1lb/500g blackcurrants
1¼ pint/570ml cheap vodka, gin or brandy
12oz/340g sugar

Mash the blackcurrants with a fork or squeeze hard with clean hands. Mix the ingredients together in a large bowl then ladle into bottling jars and leave in a warm dark place for, at the very least, one month. Try to forget about it as long as possible. When you remember it, strain it through doubled muslin cloth, squeezing out the juice, and re-bottle.