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Chokecherry

Chokecherry Wine Details
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Description: This traditional North Dakota mainstay has been made throughout the generations. Everyone remembers a form of chokecherry wine from every taste. Styles included being very sweet to very tart to semi-sweet to semi-dry. Our chokecherry wine tries to reflect on those back-home feelings and values. This wine is a semi-sweet wine that has that wonderful chokecherry taste that so many people remember. Serve this semi-sweet wine with red meat dishes as well as good old-fashioned home cooking. Every glass brings back a taste of home.

Varietal Definition
Chokecherry:
The common chokecherry, sometimes called the wild cherry, is found in all of the United States except the Gulf and lower Atlantic States and all but the very northern provinces of Canada. It is but one of dozens of members of the genus Prunus--which includes plums and cherries but is really the rose family--native to the United States and Canada. Chokecherries, botanically, are Prunus virginiana, but chokecherry befits them for two reasons; they are uncommonly sour and their stones (seeds) and wilted leaves contain hydrocyanic acid, which is extremely unhealthy. Growing as a shrub or small tree to 25 feet in height, it is often found along moist woodland margins, fencerows, roadsides, streambeds, and shorelines. Its smooth, often reddish-brown bark is quite distinctive. Its 3/8-inch flowers have five white, rounded petals and grow in dense, elongated clusters. The berries ripen from mid-summer to October, depending on location, as dark red to almost black. The berries are round, fleshy, 1/3 to 2/5 inch, and encase an egg-shaped stone which should be removed. When ripe, the berries are fairly juicy and popular among many birds. The only slightly toxic berry that could possibly be confused with the chokecherry is the Carolina laurelberry (Prunus caroliniana), but the chokecherry's bark and alternating, jagged-edged leaves are good identifiers.


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