The grape is the world’s most commercially valuable fruit. Not because of fresh eating, but because of what it becomes: wine, raisins, juice, vinegar, and brandy. Grapes have been intertwined with human civilization for at least 8,000 years.
8,000 years of wine
The earliest chemical evidence of winemaking comes from pottery jars found in Georgia (the country, not the state), dating to approximately 6000 BCE. Grape pips found at the site, along with residues of tartaric acid (a compound specific to grapes), confirmed that these were wine vessels.
From the Caucasus, viticulture spread to Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean. The ancient Egyptians had professional winemakers and labeled their amphorae with vintage, vineyard, and winemaker. Greek symposia were structured around wine drinking. Roman soldiers expected wine rations. The Catholic Church preserved viticulture through the Middle Ages because wine was required for the Eucharist.
Wine is one of the few agricultural products that has shaped religion, trade, social structure, and geography simultaneously.
The phylloxera catastrophe
In the 1860s, French vineyards began dying mysteriously. The culprit was Dactulosphaira vitifoliae (phylloxera), a tiny root-feeding aphid native to North America. American grapevines had evolved resistance. European vines had none.
Within 20 years, phylloxera destroyed roughly two-thirds of all European vineyards. The French wine industry collapsed. Entire regions were wiped out. Some famous vineyard sites were abandoned permanently.
The solution came from an unlikely place: grafting European vine tops (scions) onto American rootstock resistant to phylloxera. Today, nearly every Vitis vinifera vineyard in the world grows on American roots. The pre-phylloxera European vine, growing on its own roots, is essentially extinct in most regions.
Chile, protected by the Andes and the Pacific, and parts of Australia avoided phylloxera and still grow ungrafted vines.
One species, many purposes
Table grapes (for eating), wine grapes, and raisin grapes all belong to the same species, Vitis vinifera, but they’ve been bred for very different qualities.
Wine grapes are small, thick-skinned, and seedy. The skin contains tannins and color compounds essential for wine. A Cabernet Sauvignon grape is about the size of a blueberry.
Table grapes (like Red Globe or Cotton Candy) are large, thin-skinned, seedless, and sweet. They’re bred for crunch, sweetness, and shelf life.
Raisin grapes (like Thompson Seedless, also called Sultanina) are thin-skinned and high in sugar. When dried, their sugar concentrates to 60-70% by weight.
The same species also produces Concord grapes, the basis for grape juice and grape jelly in America. Concord grapes are actually Vitis labrusca, a native North American species with a distinctive “foxy” aroma that Europeans tend to dislike.
A global crop
Grapes are the most widely planted fruit crop in the world, covering over 7 million hectares. Spain, France, and Italy have the most vineyard area, but China is now the world’s largest grape producer by volume, mostly for fresh eating.
The Thompson Seedless (Sultanina) grape accounts for a remarkable share of world raisin production. Virtually every golden raisin you’ve eaten was a Thompson Seedless treated with sulfur dioxide to prevent browning. Regular dark raisins are the same grape, dried without the sulfur treatment.
Grapes are one of the few fruits where terroir, the combination of soil, climate, and growing conditions, is commercially recognized and priced. A Pinot Noir grape from Burgundy and one from Oregon are genetically identical but produce meaningfully different wines.