Our Story
Yarra Valley Cherries is an Australian owned boutique premium cherry farm
We are located in Seville, in the upper Yarra Valley just over 50kms from Melbourne, within easy driving access to the city, airport and transport hubs. Our 20,00 trees comprise over 35 different cherry varieties, spanning early, mid and late season fruit. This enables continual supply of cherries from early November through to Christmas each year.
Because we have the advantage of growing, picking, grading and packing our cherries all on our Orchard in Seville, we can guarantee the freshest fruit for our cherry loving customers. It also enables same day market access both domestically and internationally.
Our focus on quality is supported by our state of the art, high definition four lane electronic grading machine. This machine photographs every cherry thirty times, as they pass under the cameras, to detect blemishes, and ensure and size and colour is uniform.
Yarra Valley Cherries is accredited by Freshcare and Harps as Australia’s leading edge quality control systems. Yarra Valley Cherries have also been certified as carbon neutral - the only cherry farm in Australia which has achieved that certification from Climate Active.
Our Orchard has its own unique micro climate, through our situation in the lee of the Warramate Hills to the north and the Dandenong Ranges to the west. Our trees grow in soils of Silurian siltstone and mudstone, which contains considerable minerality.
These unique aspects of climate, soil, topography and location influence the size and complex flavours of our cherries, giving them a specific personality, much like terroir in wine.
Our Yarra Valley Cherries gift boxes are ideal for corporate or personal gifts.
We know that the richness and complexity of flavours in our cherries will surpass your expectations for taste, quality, freshness and crunchiness.
Picking, Grading and Packing
Let’s share with you a normal day in the orchard during the season.
Over 30 pickers arrive at 6am to hand pick the varieties that are ripe that day. Once picked, the cherries travel from the orchard straight to our hydro cooler which cools them to 3 degrees and they are stored in the coolroom in preparation for grading.
Later that day, the cherries are taken from the coolroom and are processed through our high definition electronic grading machine. This state of the art equipment, which has just been upgraded this year to reflect the world’s leading technology uses highly sophisticated software, recording 30 images of every cherry. It classifies them by colour and size, and separates out any damaged fruit.
Our cherries are then packed to order for our domestic or export markets into punnets, 2kg or 5kg boxes. We use great care during both the manual and systems part of the packing process to ensure the quality of our fruit is maintained and no fruit damage is sustained.
We use the highest quality packaging materials, with our cherries initially placed in a long life modified atmosphere plastic bag, and then into our custom designed boxes. Our quality packaging ensures the freshness of our fruit is maintained regardless of its final destination.
Our quality assurance system includes accreditation for HACCP based food safety and quality systems, HARPS, Freshcare and SEDEX ensuring high quality cherries post harvest.
Post harvest handling and the method of storage are critical steps in maintaining and delivering high quality cherries to our customers. Like all other stone fruit, cherries are still alive after harvest and their naturally high respiration rates make them a perishable fruit.
However, unlike some other fruits, cherries do not undergo further ripening (such as an increase in their sugar levels) after harvest, and that is why we pick our fruit at the optimum sugar levels. This means that post harvest handling and technology can only reduce the decline in quality after harvest.
Cherries are delicate! Pitting and bruising damage can easily occur during handling and packing. That is why we have installed a state of the art electronic grading machine where the cherries stay in water all the way through the process into packaging.
Our cherries are maintained within a cool chain of below 3 degrees. Because cherries are perishable, storage at higher than recommended temperatures reduces quality and shelf life. Our cold chain is established as soon as the cherries are harvested in the Orchard. This includes eliminating the heat from the Orchard when they are picked, ensuring they are hydro cooled and then in the cool room within an hour of coming off the tree.
This emphasises the great advantage of our providence in the Upper Yarra Valley, and the significant advantage of growing, picking, grading and packing all in the one place, with no food miles.
This enables us to ensure outstandingly fresh quality crunchy cherries for our customers.
We are also registered to use the Australian Grown symbol.
