What Does a Gooseberry Taste Like?

Red Gooseberry

Fully ripe red gooseberries are a beautiful thing!  I had actually never had a gooseberry before I tried to grow my own! Red gooseberries are sweet and juicy with a combination of tastes of  grape, fig and apricot.  They have the spongy juicy texture of a fig or cherry tomato but much finer seeds, flesh, and skin.  I have never seen sweet red gooseberries for sale anywhere, the farm markets seem to have the greens sometimes but the unripe bitter greens are a far cry the sweet ripe reds, imagine eating a dark green unripe banana compared to a perfectly ripe golden yellow one?  I am growing 2 varieties “sweet red” and “hinnomaki red” the bushes are prickly and droopy but I am trying them without supports and just allowing them to do their thing. Gooseberry plants become big thorny bushes, to avoid injury I planted them in the most awkward and unused location of my front yard, right behind the bus bench(there is a bus stop directly in front of my house) nobody goes to that area of the yard due to there always being travelers sitting on the bus bench so I figured these potentially painful bushes were naturally out of the way.  So far it has worked not one person has gotten prickled and the gooseberries are delicious.