Whole dried raspberries, grown at the foot of the Dinaric Alps and dried with nothing added but a little apple juice. No sulphites, no added sucrose, no oil coating. Voted Best Organic Product 2020 by a consumer jury.
What it actually is
The raspberry, Rubus idaeus, is the close cousin of the blackberry and, like it, is not really a berry: it is an aggregate of tiny drupelets clustered around a core. The difference is that a raspberry pulls away from its core when picked, leaving the hollow thimble shape, while a blackberry keeps the core inside. That hollow is the reason raspberries dry so well — thin walls, lots of surface, no dense middle to trap moisture.
Serbia and the surrounding western Balkans are not an incidental origin. The region is one of the largest raspberry-growing areas in the world, and the fruit is a genuine agricultural mainstay there rather than a marketing story.
What drying does to it
A fresh raspberry is around 85% water. Take that out and what is left is the aroma, the acidity and the sugar, all at roughly five times the intensity. Dried raspberry is startlingly perfumed — the smell hits when you open the bag — and noticeably sour before the sweetness arrives. It is a fruit that has become a flavouring.
An honest word about "sweetened with apple juice"
Apple juice concentrate is sugar, whatever the front of the pack implies. It is fructose and glucose, and it counts as sugar on the nutrition panel and in your diet. It is used here instead of sucrose because the flavour stays fruit-led and the ingredient list stays at two items — not because the product is low in sugar. Dried fruit is concentrated fruit sugar by definition.
Seeds
Raspberries contain a lot of small, hard seeds, and drying makes them more obvious, not less. Most people barely notice. If you wear a brace, a bridge or a partial denture, or you have diverticular disease and have been told to be careful with small seeds, this is the dried fruit most likely to be a nuisance.
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