Even though they have found their way to Western tables fairly recently, they boast a long and rich history. They have remarkable health properties and are so beautiful that they are no less deserving of a place in the Tretyakov Gallery than the currants painted by Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy.
We met in Kamchatka, a peninsula in the Russian Far East. After five days of backpacking across the Nalychevo Nature Park—through heaps of volcanic sand, glacial tongues and cold streams, meadows up to the waist, muddy thickets and a bamboo forest—I finally came out on a path with some shrubs, ordinary-looking and knee-high. They were Kamchatka berries, the Russian variety of a fruit known most commonly as the honeyberry.
It is impossible to describe how someone who has eaten only bread and canned food for a few days feels at the sight of berries—it has to be experienced in person. Generally speaking, one’s entire being turns into a drooling mess. It was June. Some fruits of the honeyberry were already purple, giving away their maturity. They tasted tart, sour, and wonderful; even when fully ripe, these berries are not completely sweet.
Caviar Canapés
The climate on the Kamchatka Peninsula is harsh, characterized by a long winter and a fairly short spring-summer period lasting about three months. The latter gets spoiled by cyclones from the Pacific, so agriculture does not exist there. Fruit and vegetables are imported from elsewhere in Russia, and mostly by air, since Kamchatka has no rail connection to the rest of the country. All of these factors affect the prices of agricultural produce in local stores—they are absurdly high, reaching four to five times what one might pay for seasonal local produce in continental Europe.
Social media on the peninsula regularly features photos of the horrendous prices of strawberries, cherries, or bananas that someone noticed while shopping. For the Kamchadals, it is something like a game—no less popular than uploading photos of apartment blocks buried in snow up to the second floor or videos of the morning “excavation” of cars whose roofs were covered in snow overnight.
On the other hand, the likes of salmon and trout in Kamchatka are much cheaper than in the rest of the country, as every year large numbers of them swim up the local rivers to spawn, trying to avoid people, birds, and bears hunting on the shore. The red caviar obtained from them is far from synonymous with luxury on the peninsula. Noble roe is a rather common food for the locals, abounding in quantities for which buckets and tubs would be the correct measure, rather than the miniature cans and two-bite jars for which one has to pay a fortune in Europe.
The people of Kamchatka like to troll the rest of the world, for example by reporting that they are forced to feed their cats caviar because they cannot afford the popular cat food brands in supermarkets. Or by taking photos over a huge bowl of caviar, implying that Kamchadals eat the delicacy with tablespoons. In fact, it is usually eaten on a slice of generously-buttered black bread. The essential garnish for a salmon roe sandwich is usually wild garlic or home grown chives, sprouted from an onion submerged in a jar of water that is traditionally kept in the kitchen.
There’s a sad truth behind the colorful red caviar and wild greens canapé: in Kamchatka it is hard to find natural sources of vitamins and antioxidants. Under these conditions, the honeyberry is a miracle of nature, a generous gift that has managed to replenish dietary deficiencies for centuries. It also provides a refined pleasure to the palate, but only if one’s taste buds are not corrupted by sugar. Life in nature tastes just like the honeyberry—refreshing, crisp, with a hint of sweetness hidden beneath the acidity.
The Beauty of Berries
In Kamchatka, berries are viewed as a necessity. Whoever does not eat the right amount at the right time will inevitably fall ill with scurvy, dermatitis, or night blindness. In the long run, they may not even survive. Indeed, in the North berries guarantee survival. In Central Europe they bring rather different associations, such as abundance, summer, feeling carefree. The bilberry is a childhood fruit for Poles, a symbol of holidays, an inseparable companion of sugar and cream.
In the fairy-tale rhyme by Maria Konopnicka Off to Gather Berries (Na jagody), little Johnny goes to the forest along the Bug river to gather wild blackberries and bilberries as a gift for his mother. For this ordinary Polish forest to resemble impenetrable wilderness, seeming big and scary, Konopnicka had to activate all her imagination and literary talent. Thanks to her magic, blackberry bushes grow as tall “as plum trees standing in the orchard.” The trees mentioned by the poet remind the reader more of the honeyberry, with its purple hue and plum-like shape, than the Polish woodland bilberry. In the mature phase, the honeyberry’s matte skin, covered by a layer of whitish coating, becomes navy blue just like the common plum. Yet honeyberries surpass plums in beauty due to their uneven texture, numerous dents, curves, and faults which refract the light in a unique way. They are delicious and healthy, but also so remarkable in terms of shape, texture, and color that they are impossible to ignore.
Tolstoy’s Currants
The simple, wild beauty of common fruit was appreciated by the Russian painter Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy (1783–1873). In 1818, he painted the small Berries of Red and White Currants. The work, created using watercolors on brown paper, is in the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, serving as its undoubted ornament. It is also one of the most famous pieces by the artist, who specialized in illusionist painting—he was able to paint a dewdrop on a flower petal or a lifelike fly on a leaf.
In the picture from the gallery, Tolstoy presents the simplest of simple things: a branch of red currants and a branch of white currants, arranged next to each other. The berries are ripe, shiny, and round. They seem extremely appetizing and bring a taste of the real thing to the tongue. Below, at the height of his signature, Tolstoy paints a few more drops of water. In one of them, as if through a magnifying glass, one can see the dissolving letter “O.” The picture is delicately framed, as if the painter wanted to separate his still life from its surroundings, taking it out of the context of everyday life. At the same time, on the spherical surfaces of currants, he places the reflections of invisible windows that connect the watercolor fruit with the surrounding world. In this way—playing with contrast, shapes, and textures—he transforms the ordinary and the familiar into poetic wonder.
Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy—from the same aristocratic family as the writer Leo—abandoned his military and court career for the sake of art. To say that his relatives did not like it would be an understatement. In retaliation for this brazen act of inner freedom, the family cut Fyodor off from all protection and material support, clearly implying that as the heir to a title he should have a more serious occupation. Nevertheless, the rebellious Tolstoy did not give up, and for a number of years he was practically as poor as the 20th-century Parisian painters. In his memoirs, he writes that in the most difficult period he and his family subsisted on “currants only.”
The same fruit fed him later, in a less literal sense. Tolstoy presented his picture of red and white currants, painted in 1818, to Empress Elizabeth Romanova, and she was so delighted with it that she took a diamond ring off her finger to reward the painter for his trouble. From then on, precious rings became the customary currency in which the tsarina settled accounts with the count every time she collected painted currants from him. And she ordered them many more times—as a gift for friends of the court or for guests from abroad. In this way, inconspicuous fruit lifted the artist out of poverty. The honeyberry also deserves a portrait in the Tretyakov Gallery, and more than one.
A History of the Berry
The honeyberry is still a novelty in Europe and North America, but it has a long history in Russia. Probably the oldest mention of it can be found in the book Description of the Kamchatka Land by Stepan Krasheninnikov from 1755. The author—a traveler, geographer, botanist, and ethnographer—also researched Siberia. Although he was the son of a soldier, thanks to determination and perseverance, he was educated in the fields that fascinated him. He spent a total of four years in Kamchatka.
In Russia, the plant from which the berry grows is called honeysuckle; it is simply one of many varieties. For the sake of accuracy, this general name is sometimes supplemented with a color: bluish or blue honeysuckle. It is fair to say that it is Russia’s flagship berry. In nature, it is found not only in Kamchatka, but also in the Khabarovsk Krai, Primorsky Krai, and in the vicinity of Vladivostok.
Research on honeysuckle in Russia gained momentum after the end of the Stalinist era, in the former labor camp in Bakchar in the Tomsk region. It was there that the first selection of plants of this species was made. Work continued later in the Altai Barnaul, in the Urals, and in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). Today, more than a hundred varieties of honeysuckle are registered in this country alone.
The Japanese were familiar with the honeyberry—known there as the Haskap berry—as early as the 17th century. They used it widely in traditional medicine, especially in the prevention of eye diseases. In the 1970s, they bred their own variety of the plant for commercial cultivation.
In the 1990s, Canada also became interested in blue honeysuckle. Professor Bob Bors of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon focused in particular on the berry from the far reaches of Asia. Canadian honeyberry varieties, considered the best for cultivation and sale, were developed by him. Their trade names—“Aurora,” “Boreal Beauty,” “Boreal Blizzard,” “Boreal Beast”—are associated with the Far North. They would suit Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen more than Maria Konopnicka’s fairy-tale. Bors’s varieties are very resistant to disease, low temperature, and sunburn.
One might be surprised that this superfood with such a long and rich history managed to hide from world fame and global popularity for several centuries. The reason for this is quite simple: in the times of the Soviet Union, access to plants from that area was very limited due to the Iron Curtain and the Cold War, so there was practically no international trade. It was not until the end of the 1980s that the exchange between growers from the West and East became so intense that crossbreeds enhanced by the Russian variety began to arise, soon successfully hitting the market. The work was completed by the instant exchange of information enabled by the internet. The career of the honeyberry has taken off by leaps and bounds, and marketers and nutritionists are ready to monetize it. Today it can be eaten from New York to Kamchatka, including in a tiny village near my Polish home, where honeyberry ice cream often sells out at a local restaurant owing to its popularity.
Good and Noble Health
Blue honeysuckle berries—both fresh and processed—slow down the aging of the eye’s retina and help heal its diseases. They are anti-inflammatory at the cellular level. They help lower blood pressure, improve brain function, and support the treatment of certain types of cancer. They are low in calories (the Kamchatka variety has fewer than 60 kcal per 100 g), but rich in nutrients. They regulate the level of lipids and glucose in the blood.
They also have antibacterial and anti-adhesive properties (i.e., they reduce the adhesion of pathogens), thus preventing inflammation of the gums and the digestive and urinary systems caused by bacteria including Shigella, Micrococcus, Campylobacter, Escherichia, Enterococcus, Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, and Bacillus.
They protect against the harmful effects of UVA and UVB radiation, and due to its high levels of antioxidants honeyberry extract slows down melanogenesis (the skin pigmentation process), bringing benefits in the treatment of melanoma. The vitamin C content of honeyberries is many times higher than that in blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and oranges; its vitamin A content is several times higher than that of apples and grapes.
The total number of polyphenols—organic chemical compounds responsible for the antioxidant effect of plant products—is much higher in honeyberries than in the blackberries known for such properties. The overall antioxidant capacity of blue honeysuckle fruit is three times higher than the value assigned to raspberries. The only competition for honeyberries in this area may be the Chilean maqui and Brazilian acai.
I did not know all this during my first meeting with the berry in Kamchatka. Only today do I fully appreciate the acquaintance made at the time.
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