By almost every measure imaginable, grape growers have been amazingly successful. Although national consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables barely manages to stay even from year to year, American consumption of fresh grapes has more than tripled since 1970, to more than eight pounds per person. What’s particularly astonishing is that the only fruits we eat more of—bananas, apples and oranges—are all easily shipped and able to withstand long storage. Grapes, however, are the very picture of fragility: nothing more than thin-skinned little bags of juice.
Another amazing aspect of the grape-growing business is just how concentrated it is. Those billion dollars worth of fresh grapes America consumes every year are grown almost entirely in two small areas of California. In the winter, grapes are grown in the Coachella Valley, a couple of hours east of Los Angeles. In the main summer season, they are grown in a narrow band of the San Joaquin Valley from just north of Bakersfield to just south of Fresno. Those two areas account for roughly 97 percent of the fresh grapes grown in the United States.
Sadly, the one place the industry has been consistently less than amazing is in growing a grape that has any flavor. Table grapes today have all the personality of teen idols. They are essentially nothing but guilt-free snack foods—conveniently packaged sugar water that allows you to feel virtuous while you eat it. Grapes have become wildly successful by eliminating anything that could turn consumers off—such as distinctive flavor.
Within the past couple of years, though, growers and breeders have been working on changing that. Ironically, they’re concentrating on recapturing the flavors of one of the world’s oldest and best loved grapes: the Muscat.
Muscat grapes haven’t always been as innocuous as they are now. In fact, hard as it may be to believe, not so long ago certain varieties were actually known for their flavor. Today you could sample half a dozen commercial grapes with your eyes closed and barely be able to tell one from the other, red from green from black. Slip an old-fashioned Concord into the mix, or a Muscat, and the picture would change entirely. These are grapes with character; there is no mistaking one of them for another.
The taste of the Concord, an American native, is familiar to most Americans—whether or not they have actually ever seen the grape. It’s the flavor they know so well from grape juice, grape jelly and grape jam (and Mogen David wine). When grape growing was still centered in New York, this was the dominant variety. Concord grapes have a distinctive flavor that is usually described in wine circles as “foxy,” whatever that means. For those with a more chemical bent, the smell of a Concord is that of the chemical ester methyl anthranilate.
It is odd that the grape that was the inspiration for “grape flavor” is now so difficult to find. At the turn of the last century, Concord was king. Much of it was eaten out of hand, fresh, but much of it also went to the burgeoning juice business, which got its start in New Jersey. There, in 1869, a dentist named Thomas Welch began experimenting with the newly developed process of pasteurization. He found that by using it, he could make a grape juice that wouldn’t turn into wine.
Although the Muscat grape isn’t as widely known as the Concord, it is more complex, full of allusion even on a chemical level. It comes from a mix of compounds called terpenoids: geraniol (also found in nutmeg and ginger), linalool (also found in flowering herbs such as lavender and jasmine), and nerol (also found in orange blossoms and cardamom). This heavenly floral perfume is probably most familiar from wines that are made from the grape: the Italian Moscato and Moscato d’Asti and the French Muscat de Beaumes de Venise. Muscat grapes are seldom used in American wines, although maverick wine producer Randall Grahm makes a delicious dessert wine from it called Vin de Glacier.
You might wonder about eating other wine grapes out of hand—Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir. Actually, these have never been very popular fresh. Winemakers value different attributes than grape eaters, including thicker skins (for better color) and a lower ratio of sugar to acid (less sweet and more tart). Although these qualities can make exquisite wine, they do not appeal to the popular palate.
A true grape fan can also mourn the loss of other great old-time grapes such as Chasselas Doré, Italia, Lady Finger and Ribier. Almost all of them have now vanished—at least as far as commercial table grape production is concerned. The dominant table grapes today are varieties such as Thompson Seedless, Ruby Seedless, Crimson Seedless and Flame Seedless. Their primary selling point is self-explanatory. It’s hard to be a popular convenience food when people have to interrupt their snacking to spit out the pips. This is not to say that all seedless grapes are by nature bad. Thompson Seedless (the familiar green grape) is a prime example.
Originally called the Sultanina Bianca, it was popularized in this country by William Thompson, a California nurseryman in the late nineteenth century. By far the most widely planted table grape in the United States (this one variety accounts for more than 25 percent of the total acreage), the Thompson Seedless is also the dominant raisin grape and is used (though almost never credited) in making inexpensive wines.
The fact that it has become something of a poster child for flavorless grapes is due much more to poor handling than to poor genetics. Properly grown and matured to full ripeness, the Thompson Seedless has startlingly good flavor. Perhaps it does not have quite as much character as the Concord or Muscat, but it does have a pleasingly flowery quality. The problem is that you can rarely find a fully mature Thompson Seedless in the market. When ripe, the variety has a tendency to “shatter”—that is, the grapes fall off the bunch. This is inconvenient for the grower, the retailer and the consumer. And so Thompsons are usually picked when they are still green. At this point they can be sweet, but they are never much more. Still, if you ever happen across a bunch of Thompsons that are amber-gold in color, snatch them up and see what you’ve been missing.
The modern absence of high-flavored grapes is not due to a lack of effort by plant breeders. Every couple of years, it seems, another great green hope is unveiled—a grape with distinctive flavor that will meet all the commercial requirements of growers and retailers. Almost inevitably, this new hope is found wanting in some way. One of the most recent attempts is a grape called Princess, introduced in 1999. This is a large green grape that, when decently ripened, has a haunting Muscat flavor. Like an Internet IPO, it was jumped on early by farmers, whose ardor then abruptly cooled. It turns out that just as those first vines were coming into full bearing, problems emerged. The grape is extremely unreliable in terms of production—depending on the early weather, farmers could have a great year or a lousy one. And so they’ve moved on to the next hopeful variety.
In a big-money industry like grape growing, any possible advantage must be exploited. This goes for even the most popular grapes. The Thompson Seedless, for example, is coddled like some kind of exotic bonsai tree. Not only are the vines trained to grow along specially designed trellises, but they are also meticulously pruned to manage the right number of leaves, the right number of shoots and the right number of grape clusters. And that’s just the start.
Left to its own devices, Thompson Seedless vines produce grapes that are quite small, particularly when picked early. To get around that, farmers have come up with some innovative techniques to increase grape size. The first is called “girdling,” and it involves cutting a ring in the bark all the way around the base of the vine just as the grapes begin to emerge (and often again as the grapes begin to gain color). This interrupts the flow of nutrients to the leaves and concentrates them in the fruit. Another technique is the application of gibberellic acid (“gibbing”). This is a naturally occurring plant growth regulator extracted from a cultivated fungus. (Some forms of it qualify for organic use.) It increases the size of individual grapes and also stretches out grape clusters, allowing for better air circulation and thus reducing disease. Between girdling and gibbing, a farmer can increase the size of an individual grape by as much as a third.
Certainly, not every aspect of the grape business is so high-tech. In fact, in many places raisin production hasn’t changed since it was first introduced in the late nineteenth century. It might surprise you to know that until the 1870s, raisins—about as commonplace a food as there is today—were regarded as pricey exotics (they had to be imported from the Mediterranean). But the same happy combination of heat and lack of humidity that made growing grapes so easy in California’s Central Valley also proved perfect for drying them. Today, as then, most raisins are made by the sun. Long strips of white paper are laid down between the rows of grape trellises. When the bunches are picked, they are placed on the paper and left to dry for two to three weeks. Almost all raisins are made from Thompson Seedless grapes. The difference between light (golden) and dark raisins is sulfuring. Golden raisins are sprayed with a sulfur dioxide compound before drying to keep their color from changing.
There are several varieties of specialty raisins as well. You can find varietally labeled raisins at farmers’ markets and gourmet stores—mainly Muscat, Flame, Crimson and Sultana. There is also a tiny raisin called a currant, which is the cause of no end of confusion. It is commonly believed that these are derived from the small berries that are called currants (mostly either bright red or black fruit that are grown almost entirely in the northern British Isles). But those currant fruits have nothing to do with currant raisins, which are made from the tiny Black Corinth grape, and if you say Corinth with the accent of a New York produce dealer, you will understand the root of the confusion. These are sometimes called Zante currants, which alludes to the Greek island from which the grapes were first imported. California-grown Black Corinth grapes are also becoming popular fresh. They are usually labeled Champagne grapes, but of course they are not used for champagne at all. Their tiny size is very cute, but they don’t have much flavor.
WHERE THEY’RE GROWN: Almost all of the commercial fresh table grape production in the United States takes place in California: the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the desert winter growing fields near the California-Arizona border.
HOW TO CHOOSE: Grapes should be heavy for their size, with taut, firm skins.
HOW TO STORE: Refrigerate in a tightly sealed plastic bag. Don’t wash grapes until just before you use them, as surface moisture will break down their thin skins. If the grapes are moist when you buy them, slip a paper towel into the bag.
HOW TO PREPARE: Give grapes a quick rinse in ice-cold water just before serving and immediately pat them dry.
ONE SIMPLE DISH: Pair a bunch of grapes with a selection of fresh cow’s and goat’s milk cheeses for a late-summer dessert.