WSJ article on black currants.
October 3, 2002
Lobbyists Battle to Develop New York's Forbidden Fruit
Black Currants Are Billion-Dollar Business In Europe, but Tree Fungus Led to U.S. Ban
By BARRY NEWMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
HUDSON, N.Y. -- What's round, dark-purple, juicy and a "public
nuisance," according to Title 13 Section 9-1303 of the Consolidated Laws
of New York State?
The black currant.
In New York, black currants are berries non
grata. The law forbids the fruit. That's because
black-currant bushes help spread blister rust, a
fungus that kills white pine trees.
Maine -- the Pine Tree State -- bans the berry,
too, as do South Carolina, North Carolina,
Virginia, New Jersey and New Hampshire. Until
1966, it was illegal to plant black-currant bushes
anywhere in the U.S. It's still illegal to import them
without a special exemption and three years in
quarantine.
People in this country tend to confuse black
currants with small raisins baked into buns. Those
are dried Corinth grapes. It seems someone once misheard "Corinth" as
"currant," causing centuries of mix-ups. Most Americans wouldn't know a
real black currant if they fell into a piquantly refreshing vat of them.
That is a crushing truth for Steve McKay, an agricultural educator here in
Columbia County and the berry's most ambitious booster. Mr. McKay, 49
years old and partial to shirts with leafy patterns, thinks the black currant
can take the place of a state apple industry nearly polished off by Chinese
imports. While a few other states have scatterings of small growers, Mr.
McKay sees a return to a misty past when New York was the nation's top
black-currant producer. He envisions bushes covering 100,000 acres or
more.
The black currant, he believes, deserves to be America's next big berry.
On his side are government crop experts, an upstate juice factory, and a
former television garden reporter who has founded a company -- Au
Currant Enterprises -- to inject black currants into the national fruit stream.
All that stands between the berry and big business are a few "pine people,"
as Mr. McKay calls them, and the law.
"They say, 'We have a law, we don't have to worry about anything,' " Mr.
McKay said one evening in an attic office bursting with berry-related
literature. "I mean, I'm trying to start a billion-dollar industry here."
The figure isn't entirely a fantasy: In Europe,
where blister rust is under control, the black
currant is a billion-dollar berry now.
There is no end to Europe's black-currant
concoctions: tea, yogurt, vodka, juices and jams.
Sweden has a black-currant cheese, Britain a
black-currant diarrhea remedy. In Nuits St.
Georges, where France makes most of its cassis
-- the black-currant liqueur -- there is a black-currant museum.
In World War II, its citrus supply cut off, the United Kingdom grew black currants
as a source of vitamin C. Ribena appeared, a sweet drink named after Ribes, the black
currant's species. It became a British childhood staple and still is; Ribena sales alone
come close to $300 million a year.
But GlaxoSmithKline PLC, its maker, won't sell Ribena in the U.S. "We'd have to build a market from scratch,"
says its spokesman. Coca Cola, Snapple, Welch's and Libby's all sell black-currant drinks abroad. Kellogg's
has black-currant shredded wheat. In 1996, Ocean Spray did try out a cranberry-currant drink in America. It
flopped.
"They did it all wrong," says Mr. McKay. "These marketing people say Americans hate black currants. I give
out juice at country fairs. People always love it. Oh, this is so ridiculous."
The roots of Mr. McKay's discontent go back to 1705, when a certain Lord Weymouth shipped some native
white-pine seedlings to England. The tree spread across Europe. But in 1887, blister rust broke out in
Germany. By then, the U.S. was reimporting seedlings for its depleted forests, and the disease came with
them.
The black currant, a European native, crossed the Atlantic with the colonists. But as blister rust ran rampant,
foresters realized it didn't jump from pine to pine, but from pine to currant to pine. Saving the tree meant
stamping out the berry. Laws were passed, bushes beaten. By the 1930s, the black currant had been wiped
from America's memory.
Steve McKay had his first taste of its nectar in Europe at age 18. It was a revelation. He went on to teach
farmers about fruit in connection with Cornell University. On the way, he founded the International Ribes
Association.
In 1999, he stopped by Clinton Vineyards, 60 miles north of New
York City, where Ben Feder makes wine from blueberries and
rhubarb. Mr. McKay offered him a load of black currants from
Canada, the one place with no U.S. import ban. Mr. Feder made
50 cases of cassis. Last year, he made 100. This year, Mr.
McKay drove up to Canada for black currants and brought Mr. Feder back a ton.
Clinton Vineyards is in Dutchess County, where farms are still sometimes sold to fox-hunting urbanites. Greg
Quinn bought an old farm there three years ago and was soon enjoying Mr. Feder's cassis.
Mr. Quinn, 52, used to be the "garden guy" on New York's Fox 5 News. He knew the black currant had legal
problems in New York. But he also knew that landowners who grow crops pay lower taxes. He wondered:
Could the black currant have tax appeal?
Mr. Feder sent Mr. Quinn to Mr. McKay -- and it was business plan at first sight. With a $200,000 state grant,
they ordered a market study and research to size up the berry's vitamins and minerals. Mr. Quinn founded Au
Currant "to convince landowners to grow black currants." He is set to launch a health drink made from
imported concentrate.
"This is it -- the moment of entry," Mr. Quinn said over a black-currant-and-soda in his farmhouse kitchen.
"Once this thing blows open, the black currant will be a force to reckon with."
Mr. McKay, meantime, says he had been quietly assured by state officials that New York's law would permit
big crops of new rust-resistant black-currant varieties. And he had the endorsement of Kim Hummer, a top
currant authority in the research service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Do I think black currants
could be planted and cultivated in New York State without an increase in white pine blister rust?" Ms. Hummer
says. "The answer is yes."
The only force to reckon with after that would be the pine people. "The enthusiasm of the currant people is
driving the whole issue," says Paul Manion, a pine person and professor of forest pathology at the State
University of New York. He worries that black currants are nonnative, that rust-resistance wears off, and that
sick seeds can be spread far and wide by birds, the wind or plant sales at Wal-Mart.
To which, among many technical arguments, Mr. McKay replies: "They don't understand blister rust and don't
want to. It's about common sense and management, not just, 'Oh no, you can't do it.' "
Toward summer's end, Mr. McKay got a taste of the work ahead when he visited the old, gray plant of
Clermont Fruit Processors in Germantown, N.Y. Its freezer held 30,000 pounds of black currants from a
small Connecticut grower who wants to sell them for juice blends.
"We're seeing the start of an industry," said the manager, Bill Heafy, as Mr. McKay chose a berry from a box
and popped it into his mouth. They were of a variety prized for rust immunity -- not necessarily flavor -- by
everyone hoping to grow black currants in America.
"Not even tart," Mr. McKay said, making a face. "Bitter. Bitter."
"Turned my stomach," said Mr. Heafy.
Driving away from the plant, Mr. McKay said, "We're in the problem-solving phase."
Soon after the batch was processed, something worse happened: New York State lawyers decided that merely
revising the regulations won't suffice to end the berry ban. The legislature must act. A bill must be drafted.
The chairman of the assembly's agriculture committee is noncommittal. It looks as if Mr. McKay's patience
will have to last at least into next year before he can celebrate the black currant's liberation.
"My attitude," he says, "is not calm."
Write to Barry Newman at barry.newman@wsj.com
Updated October 3, 2002
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