Early spring is one of blackcurrant farmer Jo Hilditch’s favourite times of year, as she watches the bushes and fields on her farm transform into a sea of small, pale greenish-white blossom. “It doesn’t quite rival Japan’s cherry blossom season,” she says, “but I love it, as it’s so pretty and also to see it means we know we’ll get lots of fruit.”
Getting lots of fruit is of the utmost importance to Hilditch, because her farm, the 280-hectare (700-acre) Whittern Farm in Herefordshire, is one of 34 producers in the UK who supply blackcurrants to make Ribena. The picking season runs for about five or six weeks from July, and in that time her team will harvest tonnes of berries to be pressed to make the familiar purple drink.
And it’s not just the sight of the berry bushes that Hilditch is enamoured of – just walking through the fields is another super-sensory experience. “Did you know that if you rub the leaves or the bark and smell them,” she asks, “it’s got the scent of the berries too? It’s got that lovely, soft scent.”
Whittern Farm grows eight varieties of blackcurrants onsite in order to get the highest yield possible; to extend the harvest season; and to ensure the highest vitamin C content possible – after all, Ribena was invented in 1938 as a health-aid drink and became an important source of vitamin C during the second world war when citrus fruit was scarce in the UK.
Starting from “just a small stick in the ground”, the blackcurrant plants grow into bushes and then three years on, start to bear fruit. They’re what’s known as a long crop, Hilditch tells me, as bushes can last up to 10 or 15 years, but that doesn’t mean blackcurrants are easy to grow, as there are lots of factors that can affect the crop.
“There’s never the perfect year as there are always challenges around the weather,” says Hilditch. “They need cold – around 2,000 hours below 7C in the winter months – but we don’t want the frost during flowering. If it’s too windy near to harvest the fruit can fall and if it’s too wet, then the quality deteriorates.”
That is why the owner of Ribena – Suntory Beverage & Food GB&I (SBF GB&I) – has invested more than half a million pounds in a five-year project with the James Hutton Institute, a leading centre of crop science, to develop new varieties of climate-resilient blackcurrant.
Once Hilditch’s bushes are bursting with berries, she and her team have to jump to it, and can be out in the fields from 7.45am for 12 hours harvesting the peak condition fruit. “We only have a few days – blackcurrants will hang on for about a week at optimum sweetness, which is when they are ideal for Ribena.”
After picking, the plump fruits are brought back to the yard to be washed, and the farm aims to send them off the same day for pressing at Thatchers in Somerset. The juice is then delivered to SBF GB&I’s factory in Coleford, Gloucestershire, to be made into the distinctive drink, using a top-secret recipe. As much as 90% of Britain’s blackcurrants end up in bottles of the purple stuff.
As with all the producers SBF GB&I works with, there’s an emphasis on being as sustainable as possible. For Hilditch that starts with arable crop rotation and making a commitment to planting new trees as part of the Farm Woodland Premium Scheme, and also includes using solar panels on the farm buildings and a biomass generator to create heat.
All of Ribena’s growers work with the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, an independent conservation advisory organisation, to help safeguard the UK’s native wildlife. This is part of SBF GB&I’s six-point sustainability plan, which is aimed at supporting blackcurrant production and promoting biodiversity on all of its blackcurrant farms.
Hilditch explains how that works on her farm: “Field corners and six-metre margins can be used to help sustain local habitats and help reduce water and soil runoff. So around our blackcurrant fields, we let these amazing wildflowers grow, and we plant a pollen and nectar mix. That obviously encourages bees and biodiversity.
“We try not to mow the grass too much, so we can keep it long for creatures to live among it. We also have bird boxes – one for each hectare of the farm – and bee hives around the farm, and when trees fall we leave them so they become a natural habitat for those around it. I love the countryside, so I want to be as green as possible.”
And when it comes to making Ribena, there’s just no purple without the green.
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