Description
Currants are usually chosen for what they become. Red ones are bracing enough that the recipe tends to start with sugar, and the black ones carry a depth built for cassis and cordial. Champagne is the one chosen for what it already is: a chance cross of white and red currant that came out sweet and low in acid, and good enough raw that most of a bowl disappears before it reaches the kitchen.
The fruit is not quite white and not quite red. It ripens to a translucent pink that lets the light through, so a loaded strand reads more like glass than like berries, and it is the reason this cultivar keeps turning up on dessert plates rather than in the jam pot. The flavour is clean, without the musky edge some tasters pick up in black currants.
It is also one of the oldest fruits in American cultivation still sold under its own name. The William Prince nursery on Long Island carried it in the early eighteenth century, which puts it in American gardens before most of what we grow today. It sits on the Slow Food Ark of Taste, the international catalogue of heritage foods judged rare enough and good enough to be worth saving, and it earned that on the flavour rather than the history.
Overview
- Pink currant, a cross of white and red currant.
- Sweet and low in acid, the currant that eats well fresh.
- Translucent pink fruit, jewel-like on the strand.
- No musky aftertaste.
- In the William Prince nursery catalogue, Long Island, from the early 1700s.
- On the Slow Food Ark of Taste, Slow Food’s catalogue of heritage foods at risk of disappearing.
- Self-fertile, so one bush crops on its own.
Growing Details
Latin Name: Ribes rubrum ‘Champagne’, also sold as ‘Pink Champagne’
Site and Soil: Full sun to part shade, and part shade is the better choice in hot-summer regions; moist, well drained soil
Hardiness: Hardy to roughly -40 F, USDA Zone 3, which is the range of the species rather than a figure measured on this cultivar
Propagation: Grown on own roots from cuttings
Fruit: Translucent pink, sweet and low in acid, borne in hanging clusters
Pollination: Self-fertile
Pests & Diseases: Currants are a host of white pine blister rust and are restricted in some counties and states; check your local rules before ordering
Additional Notes
- Grower’s Insight: Plant this one where people walk past it rather than in the back of the fruit block, because it is the only currant we grow that gets eaten before it reaches the kitchen.
- Regional Insight: Currants want a cool root run and resent hot afternoons, so through the maritime Northwest, the Northeast, the Upper Midwest and the mountain West this takes full sun, while in the interior valleys of California and across the South it wants afternoon shade and will still ripen with less sugar than it makes further north.
- Currants host white pine blister rust and remain restricted in parts of the United States. Check your county and state rules before ordering.
- Explore more currants in our collection: Currants
