Coral Champagne cherries ripen after Chelan and about ten days before Bing. New tree fruit varieties can take decades before going mainstream and ­becoming popular with industry and ­consumers. Coral Champagne is a good example. The early sweet cherry variety that came out of the University of California’s sweet cherry breeding program at Davis illustrates the time it can take before new varieties take root and the sometimes circuitous route to popularity. Last year, Coral Champagne was the third-leading sweet cherry variety shipped from California. Bing still dominates the variety list—more than 5.2 million boxes of the state’s nearly 8.48 […]