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 (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. 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 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 (called véraison from the French language), 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 (table). A 100-gram (3+1⁄2-ounce) reference amount of raw grapes supplies 288 kilojoules (69 kilocalories) of food energy and a moderate amount of vitamin K (12% of the Daily Value), with no other micronutrients in significant amounts (table).
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 (including the Concord cultivar), sometimes used for wine, are native to the Eastern United States and Canada. Vitis mustangensis (the mustang grape), 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 (the muscadine), used for jams and wine, is native to the Southeastern United States from Delaware to the Gulf of Mexico.
Distribution of agriculture In 2023, the world total of land dedicated to grape growing (in hectares, ha) was 6,595,680 ha (16,298,300 acres). By country dedicating farmland for grape growing in 2023, Spain had 913,000 ha (2,260,000 acres), France 753,340 ha (1,861,500 acres), Italy 713,350 ha (1,762,700 acres), and China 607,030 ha (1,500,000 acres). Approximately 71% of world grape production is used for wine, 27% as fresh fruit, and 2% as dried fruit. 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 (880,000 acres) 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 (table).
Exports In 2023, the leading exporters of grapes were Peru and Chile, each with more than half a million tonnes (table).
Table and wine grapes
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