Eating Concord grapes never fails to recall my childhood. Unlike most people for whom the taste of concord grapes is linked to Welch’s grape juice or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, mine is for the actual fresh grapes, usually picked off the vine at my aunt and uncle’s farm in Michigan. The farm was a rustic place near the end of a country road, complete with a large drafty red barn. But my favorite thing about the farm was the mature, rambling, and usually, prolific Concord grapevine standing between the house and the large vegetable patch in the back. My aunt and uncle grew a lot of fruits but the grapes were my favorite and I was always excited to go out there at towards the end of summer, into the fall, when I could eat them until my hands and lips were stained blue. I remember going home with whole paper grocery bags full of Concords but I never got sick of eating them since they’re a truly seasonal grape that you can only get for a short window every year.
Concord grapes are, without a doubt, the grapiest grape out there. Almost comically so, like a cartoonish parody of a grape, but delightful. The strong smell of concord grapes is so distinctive and tantalizingly indicative of its flavor. I love the perfectly round, firm globes and that you eat by squeezing into your mouth (called “slip skins” by growers for the way the skins slip easily off the flesh). I love that they’re sweet, a little tart, and deliciously chewy. I love that they’re so unlike all the other grapes I’ve ever eaten.
Grapes are divided into two main categories: wine grapes for making wine, typically sweeter, with thicker skins, and more seeds; and table grapes for eating out of hand, typically thinner skinned and with fewer seeds. There are dozens of varieties of table grapes out there but what’s commonly available in the US is pathetically uncomplicated and uninteresting. I generally consider the blandly sweet red or green table grapes sold in the average grocery store to be an insult to my taste buds. And while concord grapes are the US’s 6th largest crop, they are largely used to make juice and jam, not for eating out of hand. Apparently, American consumers find seeded grapes like the Concord to be “too much work”, ever willing to trade flavor for convenience.
A Brief History of This Truly American Fruit
We may take grapes for granted but they’ve been around for 130 million years according to archeological finds. Humans discovered thousands of years ago that grapes will ferment due to the yeast that naturally occurs on the skin of grapes, and archeological evidence of grape cultivation for wine dates to 8000 years ago in present-day Georgia in the Middle East. In North America, many wild native grapes could be found and were a part of the Native American diet but were considered by European colonists to be inferior to European grapes for making wine. Efforts to bring European grapes to North American were not successful due to the climate and the grapevines’ susceptibility to phylloxera and other local diseases.
In the early 19th century, American farmers were looking to improve grape varieties by hybridizing wild grapes. Ephraim Wales Bull, a gentleman farmer who lived in Concord, Massachusetts (the grape’s namesake) spent more than a decade and developed 22,000 seedlings before discovering, in 1849, the perfect globes we know and love today. In 1853, Bull’s grape won first place at the Boston Horticultural Society Exhibition, and it was introduced to the market in 1854. It was hugely popular across the northern US and parts of Canada. Thomas Bramwell Welch’s development of the first pasteurized grape juice in 1869, aided by the growing temperance movement against alcohol consumption, started its journey to become one of America’s most important agricultural crops.
Where They Grow
All 50 states produce the fruit, with California, Washington, and New York taking the lead, but Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio are also big Concord growers. Approximately 417,800 tons were produced in 2011.
There’s an area called the Concord Belt, a narrow ribbon of flat land about 60 miles long and two to six miles wide, tucked between the shore of Lake Erie and the Allegheny Plateau Escarpment in western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania. That area, with its climate moderated by the lake, is said to be the oldest Concord grape growing region in the world; it’s the largest area of grapes east of the Rocky Mountains.
This is the season for Concord grapes and if you come across some, I hope you try them! Yes, they will be more work than your average grape but they will be worth it. Too often we consume food only semi-consciously while also doing something else; this is a food that requires attention and maybe that’s a good thing! Take the time to really savor the flavor and texture of these grapes and appreciate their uniqueness.
Fruitfully Yours,
Yen
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