Cranberries Reinvented

Even with their fast-spreading popularity, white cranberries still need a little explaining, say cranberry experts. For example:

• White cranberries are not just another variety of cranberry that happens to be pale. All cranberries go from being green to white to red. Unlike other fruits (strawberries and tomatoes, for example), which get sweeter as the color develops, cranberries actually develop more tartness as the color deepens, says Carolyn DeMoranville, director of the University of Massachusetts Cranberry Experiment Station in East Wareham. White cranberries have slightly less acid, which accounts for their slightly milder flavor.

• White cranberry juice is not red cranberry juice that has had the color stripped out. The juice from all cranberries is clear; it's the red skin that gives the color in much the same way as red grape skins give red grape juice (or red wine) its color, explains DeMoranville.

• White cranberry juice has similar benefits to the red juice in protecting against bladder infections, says Amy Howell, a scientist at the Marucci Center for Blueberry and Cranberry Research at Rutgers University. All cranberries have "condensed tannins," says Howell, which are specially shaped molecules that basically build a protective shield in the urinary tract against bacteria. "When those tannins are in your body, the bacteria cannot set up shop," she explains. "Hardly any other fruit has this benefit."

Cranberries are also called "bounce berries," because the firm, ripe ones will bounce, while the bruised ones will just go splat. Bouncing is also a good description of the cranberry business as a whole. Its history is one of bounce-backs from various, unexpected splats.

Cranberries were enjoyed by Native Americans, who used the tart berries for food, dye, medicine and as a preservative because of their high acid content. They ate them raw, sweetened with maple syrup and pressed with buffalo or venison meat to make a sort of dried jerky called pemmican. They taught the Pilgrims about them and may have even brought the berries to that first Thanksgiving in October 1621, since that is the fruit's peak season.

Although there are wild cranberry varieties in Europe (the tiny, tart lingonberry is related), the big American variety is the only one in widespread commercial production.

The first commercial cultivation of cranberries dates to about 1816, when Cape Cod sea captain Henry Hall noticed that the sand that blew over the wild cranberry vines near his home in winter produced a sturdier crop of berries in the spring. He transplanted some of the vines to his own property and spread them with sand to protect them during cold weather. It was successful, and growers use the same technique today.

Cranberry farming as a business began in the 1840s and it slowly grew from a cottage industry to a $25 million business by the late 1950s, says Jere Downing, executive director of the Cranberry Institute, a trade association of U.S. and Canadian cranberry companies. Consumers could buy cranberry sauce, fresh and frozen cranberries, even a version of cranberry juice cocktail ("A glass when retiring promotes sleep and a clean mouth in the morning -- even to the smoker," went one 1930s ad), but the bulk of the cranberry business was tied to Thanksgiving.

Then came the first big splat.

In 1959, just two weeks before Thanksgiving, a top official with the Eisenhower administration announced that two batches of Pacific Northwest cranberries were contaminated with a weed killer that caused cancer in laboratory animals. Although most of the country's cranberries were grown in other areas, Arthur Flemming, then Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, said that to be on the safe side, shoppers should avoid eating cranberries for Thanksgiving. Supermarkets pulled products off their shelves, restaurants took cranberry sauce off their holiday menus, and many growers had to bring their berries to be doused with gasoline and burned.

Sales, of course, plummeted, and the industry's woes continued in 1960, when a bumper crop exceeded the still-weak demand for cranberries. It was obvious that the industry needed to expand from a Thanksgiving-only business. The cranberry growers cooperative, now renamed Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc., retooled its cranberry cocktail beverage and in 1963 introduced two new blends -- cranberry-apple and cranberry-grape. It also launched a heavy marketing blitz. Five years later, sales had rebounded.

Despite the introduction of new beverage blends and dried cranberries (Ocean Spray's Craisins), the mid- to late-1990s also had its share of economic splats. Smaller than normal crops drove up prices paid to growers but also weakened demand. When bumper crops followed, grower prices fell precipitously. The industry is just now recovering. More recently, lower-priced store brands from discount chains like Wal-Mart, plus an antitrust suit filed by Northland Cranberries, formed by ex-Ocean Spray growers, have caused headaches for the cranberry giant.

Still, for growers like Lee, who had their doubts about colorless cranberries, the new white beverages have been a welcome surprise. "Marketing said it would appeal more to families with kids and it has," he says. He knows this from personal experience. When his 3-year-old grandson comes to visit, "My wife and I would much rather put white cranberry juice in his cup than red."