Cherry Garcia

Cherry Garcia is a staple of the Ben & Jerry's brand so I thought it would be appropriate to post about it early on. Cherry Garcia is a cherry based ice cream with pieces of bing cherries and fudge flakes.
Name
Cherry Garcia was first released in 1987 as a tribute to Grateful Dead lead vocalist and guitarist Jerry Garcia. The word "Cherry" is cleverly used in place of the name Jerry in order to hint at the base flavor of the ice cream. Ben & Jerry's loves witty names and puns and its flagship flavor fits perfectly in line with the rest of its super-premium partners.
Availability
Cherry Garcia, being the most popular flavor in the Ben & Jerry's line, tends to be widely available in any scoop shop and any market that carries Ben & Jerry's ice cream (available in 3.6 ounce servings, pints, and quarts). The take-home version doesn't keep too well as it becomes a bit icy and gritty over time, although the flavor is unaffected. It probably has about a 2 week freshness life.
Flavor
High Notes
Cherry Garcia does not have an overbearing high tone. The cherry base flavor is creamy but not heavy like most artificial fruit flavor bases. Its lightness allows for flavor that is simple, yet evident. This is one of Cherry Garcia's most remarkable points: the subtleness of its creamy, cherry flavor. The chunks of bing cherries is the perfect complement to the creaminess of the base. The actual cherries are a bit sweet but they have a redeeming natural quality that does not get lost in the artificial flavors of ice cream. Overall the high notes are wonderfully sweet and subtle with the right balance of creaminess and natural structure. I am impressed with how well the base flavor and the cherries balance each other without overlapping flavors. Together they create a much fuller cherry flavor staying true to the name Cherry Garcia.
Low Notes
The key to the beauty of Cherry Garcia as a flavor lies in its balance, and considering the fragility of the sweeter tastes in this ice cream, the low end also needs to remain light. Cherry Garcia is able to create this balance with its very even low end, drawing a majority of its heaviness from the fudge flakes and the natural flavor of the cherries. Both of these flavors are subtle, complementary, and long. The flavor of the thin fudge flakes beautifully fills in the gaps in the lightness of the cherry ice cream. The fudge is a bit bittersweet making it heavy but because it is cut so thin, it is still a bit loose. The cherries, although sweetened, retain a bit of their natural acidity. This airy tartness is an unnoticed counter-flavor to the otherwise balanced sweetness of Cherry Garcia. The complexity of Cherry Garcia is often overlooked simply because it is so popular and so sweet; however, the balance of high and low notes, along with the counter-flavor, are what really contribute to the beauty of this ice cream.
Texture
Ben & Jerry's is, by definition, a super-premium ice cream. It is a fairly thick, heavy ice cream with little air in the mix. Cherry Garcia, however, is a little bit icy in the take-home variety but the texture grew on me. It is not a typically icy ice cream and as I ate it, the creaminess became more and more evident. The distribution of the cherries and the fudge is fairly consistent and I got a little bit of both in each spoonful.
Concluding Comments
As I said earlier, Ben & Jerry's most popular flavor achieved its reputation because if its beautiful, modest mix of complexity that is often overlooked. I have no real criticism of this ice cream except that it is good, not great It is simple, sweet, and full of subtle fruit flavor and there is no doubt why it has become such a staple in the American ice cream market.