It is wild grape season!

It is wild grape season again, and I just picked a big bag full!  Here is an article I wrote for The Grow Network  on foraging for wild grapes - included an old family recipe, too!  https://thegrownetwork.com/foraging-for-wild-grapes/

Interesting, I had never heard about them before. It's even difficult to find a description in German.
And I didn't know they had a different chromosome set than the real vitis varieties.

Is this wild grape used to give grape flavour to popular US sweets? Grape flavour of that kind is not known outside the US.
We have blackcurrant or elder to give flavour to purple foods. I recently stumbled across this video where an Englishwoman talks about grape vs. blackcurrant flavouring.

We made a wonderful discovery yesterday. Buried behind the brambles/blackberries by the stream that separates my land from my son's new patch is a fig tree, which ripens later than the others. We hacked a path through so we could raid it. There are grape vines growing all over the place around here, mostly giving the little black grapes shown on the right of the photo below. But then I noticed that there was a grape vine growing up the fig tree, with black grapes that were bigger than the usual sort. So we picked some of those. I have no idea what variety they are, but they are super soft and luscious, almost exploding in your mouth, and have an almost indescribable herby flavour with overtones of licorice.

The strange thing was that my son was unconvinced by them, saying they weren't very sweet and the skins were sour. My other half said they were OK. And I was getting almost delirious on the flavour and eating as many as I could get away with without messing my blood sugars up. They are the ones on the left of the photo below, with a couple of the (unidentified) figs in the middle, and a dragon for scale...



Generally, we find 'nice' table grapes planted near the houses, and the areas further away have more hardy wine grapes. But I suspect this vine was planted near the stream, actually right next to a huge hole that we're constantly in danger of falling down when we harvest them or the fig tree they're growing up, so I suspect it was put there as a 'special' that could access moisture during our hot, dry summers. I'd love to know what variety they are. I don't drink wine so I have no idea about how the flavour might translate into wine flavour, but they are awesome things to eat. I love the flavour of moscatel grapes too, but these are very different. Herby and slightly medicinal, but not 'musky'.

Anita Martin wrote:Interesting, I had never heard about them before. It's even difficult to find a description in German.
And I didn't know they had a different chromosome set than the real vitis varieties.

Is this wild grape used to give grape flavour to popular US sweets? Grape flavour of that kind is not known outside the US.
We have blackcurrant or elder to give flavour to purple foods. I recently stumbled across this video where an Englishwoman talks about grape vs. blackcurrant flavouring.

Unfortunately, I do not know of any commercial use currently of wild grapes in America.  Improved muscadines are farmed mostly for regional produce.  It is actually illegal to grow currants and gooseberries in my region due to ridiculous regulations,

Burra Maluca wrote:We made a wonderful discovery yesterday. Buried behind the brambles/blackberries by the stream that separates my land from my son's new patch is a fig tree, which ripens later than the others. We hacked a path through so we could raid it. There are grape vines growing all over the place around here, mostly giving the little black grapes shown on the right of the photo below. But then I noticed that there was a grape vine growing up the fig tree, with black grapes that were bigger than the usual sort. So we picked some of those. I have no idea what variety they are, but they are super soft and luscious, almost exploding in your mouth, and have an almost indescribable herby flavour with overtones of licorice.

The strange thing was that my son was unconvinced by them, saying they weren't very sweet and the skins were sour. My other half said they were OK. And I was getting almost delirious on the flavour and eating as many as I could get away with without messing my blood sugars up. They are the ones on the left of the photo below, with a couple of the (unidentified) figs in the middle, and a dragon for scale...

Generally, we find 'nice' table grapes planted near the houses, and the areas further away have more hardy wine grapes. But I suspect this vine was planted near the stream, actually right next to a huge hole that we're constantly in danger of falling down when we harvest them or the fig tree they're growing up, so I suspect it was put there as a 'special' that could access moisture during our hot, dry summers. I'd love to know what variety they are. I don't drink wine so I have no idea about how the flavour might translate into wine flavour, but they are awesome things to eat. I love the flavour of moscatel grapes too, but these are very different. Herby and slightly medicinal, but not 'musky'.

What a great find!  I don't know much about Portuguese grapes.  You may need to contact a university.