History dried tart cherries

History of Dried Cherries
In the late 1970’s experiments were performed at Utah State University. A group of food scientists along with some faculty and staff from the Horticulture department decided to see if they could dry some Montmorency cherries, commonly called tart cherries, in one of the ovens located in the food science department on campus. It was a very small scale operation but yielded some very promising dried cherries. The group rolled them in sugar and called them snow cherries. They began to hand out samples of these snow cherries around campus to see if the reaction to them was positive; It was.
Soon after, one of the professors from Utah State University attended a Payson Fruit Grower board meeting to introduce the “snow cherry” to the board. Phil Rowley who was on the board at the time was impressed along with the other members of the Payson Fruit Grower board. Payson Fruit Growers which is located in Payson Utah, was one of the newest members of Cherry Central, a marketing co-op for cherries and other fruits which is based in Michigan. One member of Cherry Central was attempting to dry cherries at the time in Michigan. He was using a steam generated oven dryer. He was having a difficult time drying tart cherries to a consistent moisture content which caused molding and general product rejection in the marketplace. He did have an extra oven that he was not using and agreed to sell it to Payson Fruit Growers. During the next few months the new oven dryer was installed at Payson and drying cherries began in earnest.
It soon became apparent that the quality of the dried cherries were inconsistent similar to the problems that were being experienced in Michigan. Moisture control was a major obstacle which had to be overcome. They were either very dry and hard or too moist with mold growing in them. Soon the board of directors at Payson Fruit Growers stopped the drying process.
Phil Rowley couldn’t stop thinking about dried cherries and began to wonder if it was possible at all to dry red tart cherries. During a trip he had taken a few years earlier to California he toured a factory drying prunes and apricots. Working with Jim Thompson at U.C. Davis he assured Phil that cherries, even though they were problematic could indeed be dried.
In 1987 he began building a dryer based on concepts learned from Jim Thompson, the design was a small dryer with room for three sets or stacks of trays that could be put into a drying area. It was fueled with a propane burner and had a large fan in place that blew hot air over and through the trays of cherries. After some experimentation with the small dryer Phil achieved consistently high quality dried cherries.
Demand grew until Phil combined efforts with Payson Fruit Growers and they began mass producing the dried fruit. Soon Cherry Central got the word of the successful drying operation and were very interested in the product. The Michigan drying operation was still struggling with inconsistently dried fruit and for a while Payson Fruit Growers were the only drying operation in the country that was having any success with drying red tart cherries.
Since those early days of Cherry drying there are now successful cherry drying plants across the United States. However the large scale production of dried cherries started in Payson Utah.

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