The Cherries of Céret

“Les cerises de Céret” – as melodious as it sounds in French, that’s how fruity and sweet the “Cherries of Céret” taste. Thanks to the mild microclimate and fertile soil, the fruits ripen very early here. The first are harvested in May and sent to the French President as a promotional gesture. During our stay in the picturesque town of Céret at the beginning of June, the harvest season was officially over. Nevertheless, many trees were still full of plump, ripe fruit. This abundance of taste, scent, and colour embodied fertility and plenty, ripeness and desire for me.

On a plantation next to our campsite, I met Josiane and Albert, who were harvesting cherries there. Early in the morning, before the midday heat, they tied a green plastic tub around themselves, into which the sweet cherries picked from the dwarf trees landed, before being collected in large fruit crates for transport. I remembered my childhood, when I laboriously harvested often worm-eaten or burst cherries from our standard trees into wicker baskets, using wobbly wooden ladders several metres high. Picking them from the ground here looked much more pleasant. However, the nuisance from mosquitoes and the heat remained the same.

Next to the plantations with their abundant fruits stood dry and black skeletal trees, under which cattle grazed. I initially thought of a fire, but these trees had died due to the recent dry years. Without artificial irrigation, it had recently become impossible to maintain the fruit trees.