Blackcurrants..bitter?

[Leeds_lad]

Where is that lovely black current taste I have come to love? D=
Started picking my ripe one's today and they are quite bitter. Is this normal?

[FB.]

Plants need sunshine on the leaves to create sugars from water and carbon dioxide.
Some of the sugar produced in the leaves goes to the fruit, while some is used for shoot and root growth to sustain the plant's own energy requirements for life processes.
If the temperature is cool, the rate at which the leaves can create sugar is also reduced.

So in a cool dull season fruits will tend to be smaller and sharper-tasting and perhaps later ripening. Of course, if it happens to be wet (which often happens when its cool and dull) then the fruits may be large and lacking flavours due to excess water uptake diluting the flavours.
Sometimes fruits in general will take up so much water so quickly that the skin can't stretch fast enough, so they can burst.
Dual purpose fruits are more likely to be suitable only for cooking in dull/cool years, and more suitable for eating in warm/sunny years.

[alldigging]

They need more sun!

[BUFFS]

ours are about 4/5 weeks later ripening this year,but thats cold springs and no sun,but OH made some blackcurrant ice cream earlier today,its in the freezer chilling down now,yesterday she did alpine strawbs ice cream,so we are getting stocked,we may try goosegogs when they fully ripen....

[Peas'n'Kews]

My blackcurrants are on the whole delicious, although some are large and watery.

My boooootiful dessert Goosgog (first time grown, fruiting for the first time) is producing enormous fruits but many have brust their skins. they are still deli-licious though!!!!

[veggiechicken]

My blackcurrants still look like green peas. I can only dream........

[Two_Sheds]

We harvested all the blackcurrants this week, just under a kilo (some were still unripe but I couldn't be bothered with picking them here & there, I wanted to prune out the old wood at the same time and get the nets off them and some green manure sown).

[sugar]

I leave them hanging even when they're already black. The taste gets sweeter and softer...