Japanese Wineberry

Short version:

Like a raspberry but much easier and very yummy. Doesn’t require ericaceous soil, as much sun, has it’s own defence system and won’t send runners into every corner of your garden. The only downside I’ve found so far is that it doesn’t survive not being watered as well as raspberries do.

How to grow

This is much easier than its raspberry counterparts as it doesn’t require ericaceous (acidic) soil to grow in. It can also deal with a little shade and still provide plenty of sweet berries. Its stems are completely covered in these spikey hairs, which provide a wonderful defence against insects, but it does not make it any more cumbersome to harvest than other raspberries with thorns (pruning can be a little difficult, but good gloves help). The wineberry doesn’t tend to wander like raspberries. Raspberries tend to send underground runners into your garden and you’ll find escapees popping up all over the place. This is wonderful if you’re looking to propagate lots of plants, but if you have a small garden and / or a small ericaceous bed then it can become tiresome rather quickly – especially when the raspberries have over run and choked the blueberries. I have read that the wineberry will self-seed. However, in our little garden in London (UK) this has not happened. It might be because the berries are so yummy and not so numerous on our young plant so far that we haven’t left any to do so.

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However, they don’t deal as well with dryness as raspberries do, as I found out earlier this summer in a hot spell. The raspberries all did fine, but the Japanese wineberry dried out and died. It was probably because all the raspberries had zapped all the water. It was at this point that I was very sad that it wasn’t invasive like the raspberry or had self-seeded. When I replace it, I will put it in a corner away from the raspberries. I only put it in the ericaceous bed when I originally got it because I thought it was just another type of raspberry. I was very wrong. The flowers do look very different to raspberries. The prickly sepals provide a wonderful defence. In the photos you can see the berries just beginning to push out from under the segments of these flowers.

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They are perennial and they will get bigger as the years go on, unless you forget to water and leave it to die… humph!

The canes can be pruned in the autumn after fruiting.

How to harvest

The wineberry get another point for its harvest time. It comes into its own as the summer raspberries are starting to dwindle and the before the autumn fruiting raspberries begin. The berries ripen behind the spiky sepals. The spiny sticky hairs protect the fruit from pests that would like to sneak in there first under the radar before the berry has even had time to grow. The berry starts to push its way out when it is still green. The berry will go orange and then deepen to a scarlet colour. They are quite small, smaller than raspberries.

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How it tastes

They basically taste like raspberries, except sweeter. I think these beautiful, shiny, little berries taste how raspberries would taste if they were magicked into sweets.