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This is part of Fruit Loot, which is taking a look at the strange and surprising links between fruit and money.
When I was growing up, my family would often travel to Korea, the country of my heritage. Each time, my sister and I gleefully looked forward to getting our hands on the things we couldn’t easily get anywhere else—fruit especially. We feasted on Korean melon, persimmons, Asian pears, and what we thought of as “Korean grapes.”
The grapes were always the star of the show. They tasted like grape candy. Spherical with dark blue-purple skin, they aren’t eaten the same way as typical American table grapes. Holding one grape with its “belly button” (what I call the part where the fruit attaches to the vine) to your mouth, you gently suck while pinching the fruit with your fingers. The green jellylike flesh pops out of its thick skin and into your mouth. Grapes that are consumed this way are called slipskin because of how readily the flesh falls from its casing. After pulling each grape out, we’d work with our teeth to extract and spit out the large seeds, then return to the skin to suck out any extra grape juice. We’d repeat this until we were left with lightly purple fingertips and a mound of skins and seeds.
Recently, my boyfriend’s parents showed us around their magnificent garden in Staten Island. They had footlong gourds, fig trees, a wall of tomato plants, and, to my shock, Korean grapes. It turns out these grapes—which account for two-thirds of Korea’s grape production (and are also popular in Japan)—are not Korean at all but American. A hybrid of the iconic Concord grape.
Concord grapes are rarely seen in grocery stores, but even if you’re not familiar with the name, you definitely know the taste—at least if you grew up in the U.S. It’s the source of flavor in grape bubblegum and Kool-Aid, the grape traditionally used to make the jelly in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the grape of Welch’s grape juice.
And yet, the Concord grape languishes in relative obscurity. Each year in the U.S., about 420,000 tons of the fruit are produced, a sum that accounts for just 7 percent of the 5.9 million tons of all grapes produced in the country annually. The vast majority of those Concord grapes are grown in Washington and New York (primarily by the National Grape Cooperative Association, which owns Welch’s) and are destined not for the table or individual consumer but for juices, candies, and other processed goods. One expert told me that the proportion of Concord grapes grown every year that are eaten as whole, fresh fruit is probably less than 1 percent.
This is surprising, considering that Concord grapes were once a blockbuster fruit whose discovery was met with considerable fanfare. Horticulturist Ephraim Wales Bull spent much of the 1840s experimenting and crossbreeding grape varieties in Concord, Massachusetts. He supposedly planted about 22,000 seedlings before he finally arrived at what he thought was the perfect grape. It was a hardy plant well suited to cold climates, it ripened quickly and early enough in the year to avoid death by frost, and it had a sweet yet full-bodied flavor. Naming the fruit for the town he lived in, Bull debuted his Concord grapes to wide acclaim—they won first prize at the 1853 Boston Horticultural Society Exhibition. At the exhibition, one journalist wrote: “At last, a grape had been developed that would grow in New England—bigger and better than any grown before.” The Concord was announced to be “the grape for the millions.”
After such a lauded debut, the Concord grape spread far and wide. Bull sold cuttings—each for $5, or about $120 today—left and right. Buyers of these cuttings were often other farmers and growers who in turn began selling their own Concord grapes en masse to the public. But then commercial nurseries began propagating and selling grapes to the public without any royalties going to Bull; he died relatively impoverished. The epitaph on his grave reads “He sowed; others reaped.”
Concord grapes got another boost in popularity thanks to an 1869 innovation. A dentist from New Jersey of the Wesleyan Methodist faith wanted a grape juice to use during Communion that would not ferment into alcohol. He adapted Louis Pasteur’s eponymous method, boiling bottles of juice to kill yeast and prevent fermentation. It was the country’s first unfermented fruit juice—a big deal, as it allowed bottles of fruit juice to stay on shelves without fermenting into alcohol—and many of the first orders went to churches also seeking a nonalcoholic Communion wine. The inventor, Thomas Bramwell Welch, called it Dr. Welch’s Unfermented Wine; the beverage would come to be known simply as Welch’s grape juice.
If you’ve ever tasted Concord grapes, they were likely in the form of juice or another of Welch’s Concord-based inventions: grape jelly. Welch’s Grapelade (a play on marmalade) was a staple among the rations given to American soldiers during World War I, and this jelly later became the J in PB&J.
But even as Welch’s products grew more popular throughout the 20th century, the popularity of Concord grapes as a fresh fruit was likely already waning. Steve Cockram, the general manager of Growers Co-op, a grape supplier, explains that as more railroads and freight routes were established throughout the U.S., people discovered that these grapes just don’t ship very well. That wonderful slipskin that I love—the thing that makes these grapes so fun to eat—means “they basically fall apart in transit,” he tells me. Plus, unlike the red and green table grapes you get at grocery stores today, they can’t be made seedless. And people hate seeds.
Terry Bates is a senior research associate at Cornell and also the director of an agricultural lab that largely focuses on grapes. In his mind, the decline of Concord grapes is attributable largely to the California wine market boom of the 1970s. Though Concords can be (and are) used to make wine, wine connoisseurs wanted California wine to resemble European wine—a shift that meant forgoing native grapes like Concords and prioritizing European ones. And while there are people who love the sweet, bold, and slightly musky taste of Concord wine, Bates says, “it’s almost like they’re ashamed to say it.”
Thus, the order of grapes we know today fell into place: Grocery stores became the domain of the more robust green and red table grapes, European grapes came to dominate the vineyards, and Concords became the stuff of juices and jams.
Unfortunately, Concord juices and jams are also facing an uncertain future. According to Cockram, people aren’t drinking fruit juice like they were 50 or 100 years ago—a trend driven significantly by dietary recommendations that have rendered people wary of consuming simple sugars. And if they are drinking fruit juice, it’s probably orange juice.
After vitamin C was discovered in the early 1900s, a few influential nutritionists began touting the healing nutritional properties of oranges. Sunkist and the California Fruit Growers Exchange ran national advertising campaigns focusing on the fruit’s health benefits. This happened in parallel with an orange boom in Florida—thanks to the introduction of new fertilizers, production rates increased almost fivefold from 1931 to 1950. But the thing that really cemented orange juice’s legacy was World War II. To prevent scurvy in its troops, the military made canned orange juice a staple ration. When soldiers returned home, they brought their taste for orange juice with them.
Thanks to the marketing forever linking oranges with good health, as well as the explosive postwar popularity of orange juice, the beverage eclipsed grape juice in a way that it’s never quite recovered from, says Cockram. And so grape juice receded from the American public consciousness. Even today, bottles, jugs and cartons of orange juice dominate grocery store shelves.
The Concord grape business is a tough one. Growers in 1970 could expect about $250 a ton, or 2,200 pounds of Concord grapes, says Bates—“and today you’re still getting paid $250 a ton.” That price’s stubborn fixedness means that, with inflation, grape growers are effectively getting pay cuts every year.
When it comes to grapes in North America, Concords are native to the region—as Bates puts it, “There’s nothing more sustainable than Concord.” When you take grapes native to the Mediterranean and try to grow them in the Northeastern U.S., you have to constantly spray the vines with chemicals to keep the fungus and insects off. But Concords are naturally well suited to the area—robust in the cold, disease-resistant, and just a good and easy grape to grow. It’s a shame that such a great plant that’s so well adapted to the region isn’t more highly valued.
I’m not quite sure when Concord grapes and their hybrids first came to Korea, though records show that throughout the early-to-mid-20th century, the country imported a number of different American, European, and Japanese grape cultivars. But no one seems to know why they became so popular in East Asia. There, it’s not uncommon to find boxes of them at grocery stores or eat them in desserts. Welch’s has a hold there too—Korea was the first place I ever tried Welch’s grape soda and Welch’s grape ice pops. In fact, Korea and Japan are the biggest consumers of the company’s grape products, after the U.S. and Puerto Rico, a Welch’s representative told me. For whatever reason, the flavor of Concord grapes is prized there, and it boasts a wealth of Concord grape treats you’d be hard-pressed to find stateside.
In my opinion, no jelly or juice has anything on fresh, cold ripe Concord grapes. If you’ve never tasted them but are now dying to, know that Concords have a relatively short harvest season, which typically runs from mid-September to October. If you live near where Concords are grown, you might be able to ask your grocery stores to start stocking them. If that’s not an option, Cockram suggests, you can go online and find a grower who will ship them to you directly.
I spent the fall with bags of these grapes in my fridge, courtesy of my boyfriend’s mom, and it’s been a delight to rediscover them. Selfishly, I want to hoard my wealth and keep every last grape for myself. But I also want to evangelize everyone in the name of the Concord—spread the knowledge and let the people see what they’re missing. The flavor will likely feel familiar, conjuring memories of candy, soda, and childhood, but full-bodied, with a whole new dimension. Trust me—you’ll be hooked.
