[svalli]

Have the berries ripened already? Did they ripen red or yellow?
My MIL used to have a really sweet yellow ripening gooseberry, but the plant died to some disease. I had three red ripening gooseberry bushes growing on our yard in Wisconsin; those were OK, but not the best ones I have tasted.

I read in a book that there used to be many different cultivars of gooseberries in Finland in beginning of 1900. They used to be called the grapes of north, since real grapes do not grow well here. But a disease was brought to Europe with plants from North America and that killed most of the original heirloom varieties. Later the resistant gooseberries from North America were used to breed resistant varieties and those are among the few common varieties found here today.