Grapes

The rich sweet smell of ripening Concord grapes (Vitus vinifera) is another sensory signal that fall is not far away. I have two venerable old Concord vines with trunks the size of small trees. The yields are usually heavy and perfect to make strong juice with a steam juicer. In recent years, however, raccoons have pretty much put an end to any thought of juice-making. They climb up the arbors, snatch the grapes and throw the skins on the ground, to be tracked into the house. But at least I can still enjoy the smell.


'Sungold Red'

Fortunately, at my place of employment (referred to simply as ‘the station’ by employees), we planted a varietal trial block of table grapes several years ago. And even more fortunately, when the trial was over the block did not suffer the precipitous fate of other similar trials. The table grapes have remained and yield gorgeous, pendulous clusters each year.

Before this block was planted I was unaware of the wonderful varieties available to the home grape grower. Commonly grown commercial varieties were, and still are, limited to Thompson Seedless and Flame. So the varieties in the trial, with the exception of Flame, were all new to me. The flavor depth and complexity when tasting the different varieties was quite a surprise as was the unexpectedly rich palette of colors ranging from blue-black to rich ruby red to amber and translucent green. Each year the grape block offers one of the first of many pleasurable opportunities to dive into autumn.

The varieties:

'Himrod' – hybrid of Thompson Seedless and American
'Interlaken' – green-gold seedless
'Lakemont' – another hybrid of Thompson Seedless
'Sungold Red' – deep ruby-red gold
'Beauty' – blue-black seedless
'Flame' – light red seedless
'Ruby' – European red
'Black Monukka' – European medium purple black, mostly seedless