Pomegranate Juice in Syria

Pomegranate juice in Syria belongs to a season. It starts in September and ends in November, and through those six to eight weeks hand presses go up on the streets of Damascus, Aleppo and Latakia with heaps of fruit stacked in front of them. When the season closes the press comes down with it.

Sweet fruit or sour

This distinction decides everything about the glass. Sweet pomegranate goes to fresh juice: pressed and drunk in the same minute. The sour fruit, rumman hamid, is pressed and then boiled for hours into pomegranate molasses, and it goes to the kitchen instead. So juice and molasses are not one before the other, they are siblings: a drink of a few weeks, and an ingredient that sits on the shelf all year.

Where the fruit comes from

Production gathers in the south and the north. Daraa leads with roughly 26,000 tonnes, Aleppo follows with 17,000 and Latakia with 11,000. Counted in trees, the Aleppo countryside stands out: more than a third of the country’s pomegranate trees grow there, some 930,000 of them. The national crop is around 100,000 tonnes, though the figure moves — in 2024 it fell 15 per cent against the year before.

Where to drink it

In season there are hand presses at the mouth of every souq and chilled counters in the juice shops. Damascus, Aleppo and Latakia are the busiest three. Out in the countryside the fruit itself is sold rather than the glass, because that is where the harvest happens. Prices move from stall to stall and a written list is usually missing.

How to order it

The glass is pressed in front of you, so do not settle for a bottle that has been standing. Ask which fruit is going into the press: the sweet one gives a mild glass, the sour one comes out sharp. Pomegranate stains for good, so keep a pale shirt away from the press. Outside the season, ask whether what you are handed is fresh at all.