If they’ve fermented, what does that make them? Cherry wine?
What makes you think they’ve fermented?
Nothing, really, except that they’ve been stored for a long long time, and USUALLY, when you do that with something involving significant but not microbially lethal amounts of sugar, you eventually get some fermentation.
Granted, at 250 years, anything fermenting and sealed would have had a blowout by now, so credit to the preservers for clearly keeping things clean and very well sealed. But it still made me wonder my above question.
You smash grapes. You put them barrels. They ferment. You get wine. So what do you get if you do an analogous process to a fruit that’s not a grape?
You get an alcoholic beverage or a vinegar, right?
Another take on the same story from the Washington Post (gift link). Sounds as though the thought is that they were cleaned and stored in water for consumption soon. But someone forgot about them and not long after, a floor was built over the pit in which they were stored. I wonder if one of those archeologists said to themselves, “I’m gonna taste one of these.” I certainly would.
