History of dried cherries

History of Dried Cherries
The first recorded experiments attempting to dry Montmorency Tart Cherries were performed in the late 1970’s by professors at Utah State University. After drying the cherries, they were rolled in sugar and then sampled as “snow cherries.” These were a great success with the students on campus.
Later, one of the professors presented the concept to a cherry processing facility known as Payson Fruit Growers, located in Payson, Utah. Payson Fruit Growers purchased a fruit dryer from a member of the Cherry Central Co-op in Michigan who was also attempting to dry cherries at this time, but with very little success.
In the early eighties Phil Rowley, a board member of Payson Fruit Growers, began to research the drying of tart cherries once again. In 1987, after many years of trial and error and with the help from, dehydrating expert from University of California, Davis, Jim Thompson, Phil Rowley's farm, Rowley's South Ridge Farms began to dry cherries in earnest making a uniformly moist tart cherry. 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 South Ridge Farms was the only drying operation in the country that was having any success with drying red tart cherries. The demand for the western dried cherries continued to increase due to that success. It wasn’t too long until South Ridge Farms combined their efforts with Payson Fruit Growers and moved the dryer 6 miles north to Payson where the freezers and storage capacity of the Co-op could be utilized. Later many other companies also began cherry drying operations.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu