Berry stealers!!

As I was driving back today from a very uneventful trip, I came across a couple of people collecting, in a very proffesional method, the Rowan berries that seem to be everywhere at the moment. The fence path on Haughmond hill is in proliferation, fantastic sight after what seems like years of poor crops. As evident in the amount of fruit at Venus Pools this summer, and very tasty it is to! so they say!!

Now being curious as to just what they were going to do with this massive crop this year, and being unable to stop at the time, a quick trawl on the net produced the following interesting explanation.

The berries of European Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) can be made into a slightly bitter jelly which in Britain is traditionally eaten as an accompaniment to game, and into jams and other preserves, on their own, or with other fruits. The berries can also be a substitute for coffee beans, and have many uses in alcoholic beverages: to flavour liqueurs and cordials, to produce country wine, and to flavour ale.
Rowan cultivars with superior fruit for human food use are available but not common; mostly the fruits are gathered from wild trees growing on public lands.

Rowan berries contain sorbic acid, an acid that takes its name from the Latin name of the genus Sorbus. Raw berries also contain parasorbic acid (about 0.4%-0.7% in the European rowan[6]), which causes indigestion and can lead to kidney damage, but heat treatment (cooking, heat-drying etc.) and, to a lesser extent, freezing, neutralises it, by changing it to the benign sorbic acid. Luckily, they are also usually too astringent to be palatable when raw. Collecting them after first frost (or putting in the freezer) cuts down on the bitter taste as well, now is this part of the reason we see these wee fellows

SO! with the Winter slowly creeping up on us, of course we have the fantstic colour changes to come first with the fantaastic first frosty mornings heralding the Rut, it will be slow I hope but then what do we get this year, more wet and miserable? who knows