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.
Not to be confused with Grapefruit.Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)
288 kJ (69 kcal)
15.48 g
0.9 g
Quantity
Quantity
Quantity
81 g
The cultivation of grapes began perhaps 8,000 years ago, and the fruit has been used as human food over history. Eaten fresh or in dried form (as raisins, currants and sultanas), 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.[3][4] 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.[5][6][7]
The oldest known winery was found in Armenia, dating to around 4000 BC.[8] 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.[9]
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics record the cultivation of purple grapes, and history attests to the ancient Greeks, Cypriots, Phoenicians, and Romans growing purple grapes both for eating and wine production.[10] The growing of grapes would later spread to other regions in Europe, as well as North Africa, and eventually in North America.
In 2005 a team of archaeologists concluded that some Chalcolithic wine jars, which were discovered in Cyprus in the 1930s, were the oldest of their kind in the world, dating back to 3,500 BC.[11] Moreover, Commandaria, a sweet dessert wine from Cyprus, is the oldest manufactured wine in the world, its origins traced as far back as 2000 BC.[12]
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 were considered by early European colonists 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.[13]
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:
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.[23]
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 (see Health claims, below).[24][25]
Uses
Culinary
Grapes are eaten raw, dried (as raisins, currants and sultanas), or cooked. Also, depending on 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 (table grapes), or grapes that are used to make wine (wine grapes). Table grape cultivars normally have large, seedless fruit and thin skins. Wine grapes are smaller (in comparison to table grapes), usually contains seeds, and have thicker skins (a desirable characteristic in making wine. 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 (approximately 24% sugar by weight.) In comparison, commercially produced "100% grape juice" made from table grapes are normally around 15% sugar by weight.[26]
Flower buds
Flowers
Immature fruit
Grapes in Iran
Wine grapes
seedless grapes
