There's a first time for everything.... I guess....

I've never thought of Concord grapes as something special.  When I was a little girl back in Upstate New York, there were Concords growing on the fence in my grandmother's backyard.  I think they were just kind of there.  We certainly never did any maintenance on them, and I don't think the neighbors ever did much with them either.  They just kind of grew there.  Oh, I used to enjoy them, don't get me wrong.  I would run out there as soon as we pulled into the driveway and gobble them down straight from the vine.  I liked to eat them when they were unripe, too.  Now that I'm older and have had exposure to cuisines other than my grandmother's simple but delicious Italian-American fare, I'm kind of kicking myself for not making use of the leaves, but that's beside the point.  I would never have considered buying Concords at the store, because who pays for something that's just lying around for free? 

 

Fast-forward.... well, fast-forward a lot of years, and no I'm not going to tell you how many.  I was in Whole Foods the other day, doing my grocery shopping, and a container of grapes caught my eye.  They were Concords.  It has been a very long time since they were just lying around for free, and this would have been the wrong season for them anyway.  It was a dark, damp, dismal and icky New England day, and I was feeling fussy and maybe a little homesick.  I saw these grapes, and on an impulse I reached out, grabbed them and threw them into the cart.  All right, I placed them gently into the cart.  Anyway, I brought them home, put them on the counter in plain sight, and didn't think much about it until last night.  I had come down with an unpleasant cold or flu or something, and I wasn't feeling up to cooking.  Rather than go out and get takeout soup from our local Cheap Chinese joint, my husband offered to make me the soup we always eat whenever one of us is sick.  (It's called Sick Soup.  I bet you didn't see that one coming!)  The thing was, he was going to have to work with a handwritten recipe that I'd thrown together years ago.  He asked me to sit in the kitchen with him to answer any questions that might come up.  Well, I hadn't eaten anything all day, and there were those grapes, just looking at me.  I grabbed some and started to nibble. 

 

Now, while our dog is a handful and a half, he's generally pretty good about things like not begging for two-leg food.  He's more likely to bring you a toy to play with while you're eating than to try and steal your steak.  There are two exceptions to this rule: ice cubes (really!) and grapes.  We discovered the latter one day when I had left a bunch of grapes on the counter, gone out and found the discarded stems scattered about the floor.  He recently had some Very Important Surgery, and I was feeling a little sorry for him, so I gave him one.  My husband saw.  "What are you feeding him?" he asked.  I told him, and he frowned.  "Can I try?"  So I gave my husband a grape too.  "Those are amazing!" he exclaimed.  "What are they?"  "They're grapes," I repeated, wondering if I'd hallucinated telling him they were grapes a minute before (I was pretty sick.) 

 

As it turned out, my husband had never, ever, eaten a Concord grape.  He had only ever consumed the green seedless variety.  This is a crying shame, because the green seedless variety aren't very flavorful or interesting.  Well, he was hooked.  He had all sorts of questions, like where do they come from and how did you find out about them.  I explained about my grandmother's yard, and his delight grew.  "We should be able to grow them here!" he exclaimed.  I told him how worry free they were, and we discussed it for a few minutes.  "Maybe we could even make our own wine from them!" he enthused.  I had to put the brakes on that idea - think Manichewitz - but he was still pretty enthusiastic about the grapes.  I still can't believe he'd never tried Concord grapes before! 

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Comments

[Paul B.]

Great story! I'm a home winemaker who makes dry sipping wine from Concord in Ontario, Canada. Believe me, Manischewitz and all the other syrupy beverages that are known by most Americans as equivalent to Concord wine are NOTHING like the crisp, lithe, light-bodied fragrant wines that you can make at home from Concord. What has happened is that the success of marketing to North Americans' sweet tooth has cemented the notion in people's minds that Concord wine = syrupy sweet and monolithic. It simply isn't true!

Concord needs to be picked from well-tended vines (not overcropped), well ripened, then crushed, the must chaptalized if need be and fermented on the skins. It makes a beautiful ruby-scarlet wine that smells like blossoms and strawberries.

Cheers.

[Fearless Kitchen]

Paul,

Thanks for your comment. I'd never even considered the possibility of a dry Concord wine. It's an intriguing possibility, and I'll definitely have to keep my eyes open for some. We've never tried making a proper wine, although both of us have experience making mead, but if we get enough to make a batch work it could be a lot of fun.