I love eating wild blackberries during my walks at this time of year. Sampling one or two tart berries from every bush along the way, it always seems to me that each produces fruit unlike any other, any place else: as (they say) small vineyards produce distinctively different wines because of their soil and situation.
But professional tasters (if any exist) of local blackberries have to work on a much more delicate scale than wine tasters. One meter is a long way in blackberry space.
A poem Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney starts
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it.
