Grape
A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus Vitis. Grapes are a non-climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters.
The cultivation of grapes began approximately 8,000 years ago, and the fruit has been used as human food throughout its history. Eaten fresh or in dried form, grapes also hold cultural significance in many parts of the world, particularly for their role in winemaking. Other grape-derived products include various types of jam, juice, vinegar and oil.
History
The Middle East is generally described as the homeland of grapes and the cultivation of this plant began there 6,000–8,000 years ago. Yeast, one of the earliest domesticated microorganisms, occurs naturally on the skins of grapes, leading to the discovery of alcoholic drinks such as wine. The earliest archeological evidence for a dominant position of wine-making in human culture dates from 8,000 years ago in Georgia.The oldest known winery, the Areni-1 winery, was found in Armenia and dates back to around 4000 BC. By the 9th century AD, the city of Shiraz was known to produce some of the finest wines in the Middle East. Thus it has been proposed that Syrah red wine is named after Shiraz, a city in Persia where the grape was used to make Shirazi wine.
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics record the cultivation of purple grapes, and history attests to the ancient Greeks, Cypriots, Phoenicians, and Romans growing purple grapes for eating and wine production. The growing of grapes would later spread to other regions in Europe, North Africa, and eventually in North America.
In 2005, a team of archaeologists concluded that Chalcolithic wine jars discovered in Cyprus in the 1930s dated back to 3500 BC, making them the oldest of their kind in the world. Commandaria, a sweet dessert wine from Cyprus, is the oldest manufactured wine in the world with origins as far back as 2000 BC.
In North America, native grapes belonging to various species of the genus Vitis proliferate in the wild across the continent and were a part of the diet of many Native Americans, but early European colonists considered them to be unsuitable for wine. In the 19th century, Ephraim Bull of Concord, Massachusetts, cultivated seeds from wild Vitis labrusca vines to create the Concord grape, which would become an important agricultural crop in the United States.
Description
Grapes are a type of berry fruit that grow in clusters of 15 to 300. The berries appear within a 60 day period after fertilization first producing tartaric acid, then later malic acid when their flesh increases in reaction to the hormone of ethylene; these acids give slight sour tastes to the berries other than their sweetness. When these young berries reach a ripening stage, the berries change to darker colours, increase in size and produce sugars; this véraison period begins in August taking around about 45 days with normal conditions in the Northern Hemisphere. Ripe grape berries are typically ellipsoid in shape resembling a prolate spheroid. Their flesh has 75-85% water content; the water is obtained from the plant xylem before ripening, the phloem supplies water with soluble sugars glucose and fructose following the ripening stage.Anthocyanins and other pigment chemicals of the larger family of polyphenols in purple grapes are responsible for the varying shades of purple in the grape berries and red wines they produce. Various grapes ripen can be crimson, black, dark blue, yellow, green, orange, and pink. "White" grapes are actually green in color and are evolutionarily derived from the purple grape. Mutations in two regulatory genes of white grapes turn off production of anthocyanins, which are responsible for the color of purple grapes.
Nutrition
Raw grapes are 81% water, 18% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and have negligible fat. A reference amount of raw grapes supplies of food energy and a moderate amount of vitamin K, with no other micronutrients in significant amounts.Grapevines
Most domesticated grapes come from cultivars of Vitis vinifera, a grapevine native to the Mediterranean and Central Asia. Minor amounts of fruit and wine come from American and Asian species such as:- Vitis amurensis, the most important Asian species
- Vitis labrusca, the North American table and grape juice grapevines, sometimes used for wine, are native to the Eastern United States and Canada.
- Vitis mustangensis, found in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma
- Vitis riparia, a wild vine of North America, is sometimes used for winemaking and jam. It is native to the entire Eastern United States and north to Quebec.
- Vitis rotundifolia, used for jams and wine, is native to the Southeastern United States from Delaware to the Gulf of Mexico.
Distribution of agriculture
There are no reliable statistics that break down grape production by variety. It is believed that the most widely planted variety is Sultana, also known as Thompson Seedless, with at least 3,600 km2 dedicated to it. The second most common variety is Airén. Other popular varieties include Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon blanc, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Grenache, Tempranillo, Riesling, and Chardonnay.
Production
In 2023, world production of grapes was 72.5 million tonnes, led by China with 19% of the total, with Italy and France as major secondary producers.Exports
In 2023, the leading exporters of grapes were Peru and Chile, each with more than half a million tonnes.Table and wine grapes
Commercially cultivated grapes can usually be classified as either table or wine grapes, based on their intended method of consumption: eaten raw or used to make wine. The sweetness of grapes depends on when they are harvested, as they do not continue to ripen once picked. While almost all belong to the same species, Vitis vinifera, table and wine grapes have significant differences, brought about through selective breeding. Table grape cultivars tend to have large, seedless fruit with relatively thin skin. Wine grapes are smaller, usually seeded, and have relatively thick skins.Grapes accumulate sugars as they grow on the grapevine through the transportation of sucrose molecules that are produced by photosynthesis from the leaves. During ripening the sucrose molecules are hydrolyzed into glucose and fructose. Wine grapes tend to be very sweet: they are harvested at the time when their juice is approximately 24% sugar by weight. By comparison, commercially produced "100% grape juice", made from table grapes, is usually around 15% sugar by weight.
Seedless grapes
Seedless cultivars now make up the overwhelming majority of table grape plantings. Because grapevines are vegetatively propagated by cuttings, the lack of seeds does not present a problem for reproduction. It is an issue for breeders, who must either use a seeded variety as the female parent or rescue embryos early in development using tissue culture techniques.There are several sources of the seedlessness trait, and essentially all commercial cultivators get it from one of three sources: Thompson Seedless, Russian Seedless, and Black Monukka, all being cultivars of Vitis vinifera. There are currently more than a dozen varieties of seedless grapes. Several, such as Einset Seedless, Benjamin Gunnels's Prime seedless grapes, Reliance, and Venus, have been specifically cultivated for hardiness and quality in the relatively cold climates of northeastern United States and southern Ontario.
An offset to the improved eating quality of seedlessness is the loss of potential health benefits provided by the enriched phytochemical content of grape seeds.
Uses
Culinary
Grapes are eaten raw, dried, or cooked. Also, depending on the grape cultivar, grapes are used in winemaking. Grapes can be processed into a multitude of products such as jams, juices, vinegars and oils.Commercially cultivated grapes are classified as either table or wine grapes. These categories are based on their intended method of consumption: grapes that are eaten raw, or grapes that are used to make wine.
Table grape cultivars normally have large, seedless fruit and thin skins. Wine grapes are smaller, usually contains seeds, and have thicker skins. Most of the aroma in wine is from the skin. Wine grapes tend to have a high sugar content. They are harvested at peak sugar levels In comparison, commercially produced "100% grape juice" made from table grapes are normally around 15% sugar by weight.
Raisins, currants and sultanas
In most of Europe and North America, dried grapes are referred to as "raisins" or the local equivalent. In Britain and Ireland, three different varieties are recognized, forcing the EU to use the term "dried vine fruit" in official documents.A raisin is any dried grape. While raisin is a French loanword, the word in French refers to the fresh fruit; grappe refers to the bunch. A raisin in French is called raisin sec.
A currant is a dried Zante Black Corinth grape, the name being a corruption of the French raisin de Corinthe. The names of the black and red currant, now more usually blackcurrant and redcurrant, two berries unrelated to grapes, are derived from this use. Some other fruits of similar appearance are also so named, for example, Australian currant, native currant, Indian currant.
A sultana was originally a raisin made from Sultana grapes of Turkish origin, but the word is now applied to raisins made from either white grapes or red grapes that are bleached to resemble the traditional sultana.