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At a recent family celebration, my daughter gave
me a beautiful piece of art – a hand-colored wood burning of purple grapes she
had created. It’s a special gift, and it will be placed on my walls with
her other drawings and paintings. She is presently finishing up her
degree; this semester’s coursework included an art history course covering
Classical antiquity. People of ancient cultures enjoyed celebrating and
honoring deities with lavish parties that included grapes; there are many
existing artworks depicting these events on vases, frescoes, mosaics,
etc. Wine drinking was even formalized -- Greek symposia were scripted
gatherings for wealthy men, where they drank and convivially talked in rooms
designed especially for the purpose. (Man cave, 1.0).
Of course, the Romans, who borrowed not a few aspects from Hellenistic culture, continued their celebrations with grapes. According to a 2006 BBC documentary I watched recently (featuring Terry Jones, co-director of Monty Python and the Holy Grail), the Romans also sent huge shipments of wine to the barbarian Celts, who lived in France before it became a major grape producing region. (The Romans would later go on to annihilate the Celts, steal their gold, and enslave the survivors after the Gallic Wars, c. 50 BC).
The growing of grapes for food and wine predates the Greeks, going back about eight millennia. According to Wikipedia, domestication began in the watershed area of the Black Sea. Grapes and wine also were important to Egyptian, Hebrew and Christian cultures, probably because in the Ancient World it was far safer to drink wine over microbe-infested ground water. (Noah grew grapes, grapes were important in Middle Eastern economies, Christ turned water into wine at the wedding at Cana as his first miracle, and in later Christian-era art, grapes symbolized the sacrament of the Eucharist).
At the same time, native people throughout North America included grapes in their diets, but probably not for wine, as the abundant “fox” grape species (v. labrusca, v. riparia, and v. rotundifolia), have less sugar content than the Old World grapes. According to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, Spanish friars initially brought European varieties here in the 1700s to use at their California missions. Commercial production of grapes began in the East as early as 1802, when Catawba varieties were grown in the Carolinas; the first successful winery business was founded by Nicholas Longworth of Cincinnati, who used Catawba grapes to make sparkling wine that was well-received in Europe and by German immigrants. (Longworth became known as the “Father of American Grape Culture”; his great-grandson, Nicholas III, went on to be U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives and the husband to Alice Lee Roosevelt, the controversial daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt.)
The most-famous grape of American derivation is probably the Concord, which was developed in 1849 by Ephraim Wales Bull of Concord, Massachusetts. The deep purple grape, which is a cross between the labrusca and perhaps either the Catawba or a vinifera variety, became popular when Dr. Thomas Welch pasteurized grape juice to prevent its fermentation. Welch introduced the grape juice to be used for communion during an age where America’s excessive thirst for alcohol was being questioned. His process led to the start of the grape juice industry; other popular grapes and grape products include seedless grapes, white grapes, raisins and sultanas. According to the AMRC, “Consumption of fresh grapes has increased from 2.9 pounds per person in 1970 to 7.9 pounds in 2009. U.S. consumption of grape juice totaled 4.1 pounds per person that year (ERS 2009).”
Next week, we’ll look at some of the health benefits grapes offer, as a balance to this week’s celebration of spirits.
Until next time, cheers!
Lori
