Ribena - fruit juice soft drinks.

The berry bushes that grow the blackcurrants for Ribena go through many different stages throughout their lives; from being first planted and looked after in nursery, to being harvested each year, through to stopping producing berries around the age of 12.

Have a read about their life on a Ribena blackcurrant farm:

1.    A strong twig between 7cm and 9cm is cut from a blackcurrant bush which is protected from plant pests and disease in a special nursery, and planted between October and March.

2.    Year 1- the cutting produces some small shoots. At the end of the first season, the small shoots are cut off

3.    Year 2 – the plant grows lots of strong shoots

4.    Year 3 – the shoots produced last year bear fruit for the first time and the bush grows more branches that will bear fruit the following year.

5.    Between the age of four and eight years, the bush grows its biggest yield. Per acre of bushes, between three to five tons of blackcurrants are harvested each year! An average bush can keep producing blackcurrants for 12 years.

6.    From its leaves falling in October and until March, the blackcurrant bush remains dormant.

7.    As the buds start to grow in the spring, frost protection measures make sure the buds are not damaged by the frost.

8.    Each April/May, the bushes flower. After the flowers are fertilised by insects, green berries form, which turn black over three weeks. These are then harvested between July and August.

9.    Throughout its life, a bush is looked after by being pruned, fed and kept healthy before being carefully harvested.

10.    As older blackcurrant bushes stop producing berries, new bushes are planted and the process starts again.

You can find out more about the journey Ribena berries go on, from bush to bottle, over on the Ribena YouTube channel.

Everyone knows that Ribena Blackcurrant squash is made from delicious blackcurrants, but did you know that Ribena comes from the Latin name for blackcurrants, Ribes nigrum?

There are around 150 types of blackcurrant and most of the world’s cultivated blackcurrants are named after Scottish mountains, such as Ben More and Ben Hope. Special varieties that are grown by British Ribena blackcurrant growers are called Ben Starav, Ben Gairn and Ben Tirran, to name just a few.

In partnership with the Scottish Research Crop Institute (SCRI), two new varieties of blackcurrant have been specially bred to withstand the effects of climate change. These are called Ben Vane and Ben Klibreck and were harvested for the first time in 2007.

All of our blackcurrant varieties ripen between the first week of July and mid August when the harvest occurs, meaning that we’ve just come to the end of this year’s harvest and we can start preparing for next year’s crop.