The Bing Cherry - A brief, important history of the best known cherry on the planet.

A brief, important history of the best known cherry on the planet.

In 1847, Henderson Luelling brought 700 fruit trees by oxcart from Iowa to the Willamette Valley, Oregon, establishing the first commercial nursery in the Northwest. He was soon joined by his brother, Seth Lewelling, who eventually took ownership of the nursery. Among Lewelling's employees was his Chinese workers' foreman, Ah Bing. Lewelling and Bing alternated rows in the nursery's test area, and legend has it the memorable cherry fruited on a tree in Bing's row. Lewelling honored his Chinese foreman by naming the new cherry after him.

Florence Olson Ledding, Seth Lewelling's stepdaughter and one of the first female attorneys in Oregon, described Bing as more than six feet tall and of Manchu descent, hailing from northern China — very unlike the majority of Chinese immigrants, who mainly came from the more southern Guangdong province. According to Ledding, when someone suggested Lewelling name the cherry after himself, Lewelling protested, saying "No, I'll name this for Bing. It's a big cherry and Bing's big, and anyway it's in his row, so that shall be its name."

The Bing was a cross between the Black Republican cherry and Napoleon, a light-skinned cherry originally from France, also known as Royal Ann in Oregon.

The story has a bittersweet ending. After working for Lewelling for thirty-five years, Ah Bing returned to China. He left behind no correspondence, immigration paperwork, or journals. It is possible he tried to return to the U.S. but could not — the Scott Act of 1888 had made it illegal for Chinese laborers to reenter the country, even long-term residents, and the broader Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had been fueling violent anti-Chinese sentiment throughout the Pacific Northwest for years. Whether law or hostility kept him away, or whether he simply chose to stay, is unknown. Ah Bing faded from memory — though it is possible he is the best remembered of all, memorialized countless times in early summer when people bite into the fruit that bears his name.

The Cherry Itself

To taste a Bing is indeed like eating a cherry. It is the flavor you expect. It is the flavor that a cherry is. The flesh and the juice are dark — richly dark, full of pigment — and you know this because this cherry stains with a gorgeous deep reddish color. If you only have one cherry this season, it might be the one to have.

The Bing is the definition of classic cherry flavor — bold, sweet-tart, and unmistakably itself. Its sweetness and acidity are in genuine balance with each other, neither overwhelming the other, which gives it depth and complexity that flatter, sweeter varieties lack. It finishes with a clean brightness — a slight tang from malic acid — that most other sweet cherries don't deliver. Where the Rainier is honeyed and delicate and the Early Robin is mild and gentle, the Bing is assertive. It tastes completely, satisfyingly like a cherry because it is the cherry — the variety that set the standard everything else is measured against.

What is perhaps its most remarkable characteristic is its consistency. Year to year, site to site, the Bing maintains a flavor profile that customers recognize and return to with confidence. The Bing has stayed the Bing in part because the cherry itself resists the pressures that change other varieties.

A Note on How Cherries Are Sold

Keep in mind that in the grocery aisle, cherries are often referred to simply as "reds" and "light-skinned." The variety is rarely displayed, and if it is, they are often all Bings and Rainiers — which explains why some "Bings" one might like and others not so much. What is being sold as a Bing may vary considerably in quality depending on where it was grown, what rootstock the tree is on, the weather that season, and when it was harvested. The name on the sign is the beginning of the story, not the whole of it.

Which Group It Belongs To

The Bing is a sweet cherry — Prunus avium — and the defining variety of the dark sweet cherry category. It remains the benchmark against which every other sweet cherry variety is measured.

How Old It Is

Approximately 150 years one of the oldest varieties still in commercial production in the Pacific Northwest.

Brix

Ripe Bing cherries typically measure 17 to 22 Brix, with most commercial fruit toward the lower end and well-managed, low-crop-load orchards reaching the upper end. The minimum commercial standard for Pacific Northwest sweet cherries — 16 Brix — is essentially calibrated around the Bing.

The Brix number alone does not capture what makes the Bing taste the way it does. Its moderate malic acid content amplifies the perception of its sugar — the two working together to produce a flavor that registers as more complex and more intensely cherry than a blush variety at comparable Brix. A Bing at 18 Brix can taste richer and more satisfying than a blush cherry at 20 Brix. Acid is the volume dial, and the Bing has more of it than almost any other commercial sweet cherry.

Distinctive Physical Characteristics

Medium to large, averaging around two centimeters in diameter, plump and uniform, round to heart-shaped, attached to a slender green stem. Skin is glossy, taut, and smooth — ranging from deep maroon to dark red, nearly black at full ripeness. Flesh is bright red, firm, and aqueous with a distinctive snap. It is a clingstone variety. The dark juice stains — the trade-off for the anthocyanin concentration that drives both its color and its flavor depth.

Self-Incompatibility

The Bing cannot fertilize its own flowers or those of other Bing trees. It requires a compatible pollinizer — Van, Black Tartarian, Lapins, and Rainier among the most commonly used — and adequate honeybee populations to carry pollen between them. One to two hives per acre is the commercial standard.

This dependency is historically significant. It is the reason the Rainier spent its first two decades planted not as a premium fruit variety but as a pollinizer to serve the Bing. The Bing's inability to stand alone inadvertently launched the Rainier's commercial existence.

Where It Sits in the Season

The Bing is the mid-season anchor. Early Robin and Black Pearl open the season before it — the Black Pearl running a few days to a week behind the Early Robin depending on the year. The Bing and Rainier follow in the same general window, their order varying year to year — the Bing typically arriving a few days to a week ahead of the Rainier, but in some years the gap closes entirely. Lapins come after, and then the Sweetheart, reliably at least a week behind whatever came last.

Because every other variety is described by its distance from the Bing, its arrival is not just a harvest event. The season is organized around it.

Its Place in Cherry History

It was named for a man who deserved to be remembered and nearly wasn't — whose contribution was honored in the moment and then taken away by law and circumstance. That the cherry has kept his name spoken millions of times every summer, for 150 years and counting, is one of the most durable form of memory the fruit world has to offer.