Muscadines and scuppernongs remind me of being on the way somewhere, on a summer trip towards a desirable destination, or mostly the interruptions getting there.
As a family, we picked them up at roadside stands en route to the lake or the river or the Carolina coast. We kids would be mostly annoyed at our parents for stopping the smooth ride and the air conditioning in the car on a hot summer day for some delicacy we didn’t quite understand. Mom would wax nostalgic about summers as a kid in South Georgia and Dad would relish the juice, spit the seeds out the window and chew the fruit joyfully as we rolled our eyes. I would turn the R.E.M. back up on my headphones.
In recent years I’ve grown more interested in these native grapes of the American South. They exist in a light and sunny realm between summer and the earliest hints of fall, like they were created as a coping mechanism to help get you through the maddening heat. In flavor, they’re somewhere between sweet and sour and a bit bitter. There’s a process involved in the finding and eating of these southern grapes, and there’s a mystery of flavor and finesse waiting beneath their varied skins.
Over 300 different muscadines have been catalogued, but Southerners know there are two that matter, muscadines and scuppernongs, and that these can be distinguished by color—purple or bronze. Yet, does anybody really know the difference between a muscadine and a scuppernong? If you ask around, as I have, you usually get more confusion or indifference or the occasional know-it-all who points out that the muscadines are the red ones. Upon further investigation and reflection, there’s both more to the story and less, which in my mind makes the grapes all the more fun to play with.
Genetically, they seem to be pretty much the same. A scuppernong is a muscadine, though not all muscadines are scuppernongs. Both start green and tiny, and it can take some time for them to turn red at all, leaving a period mid-summer when you’re not sure which way they will ripen.
Clearly, there are differences. The scuppernong is known for its golden brown skin in maturity. They usually taste somewhat less sweet, at least in the juice if not also the fruit. There’s a floral quality. A deep burgundy muscadine can still have a tart fruit but when you bite through the tough skin, the juice flows sweetly, like Welch’s. Scuppernongs are named for a river in North Carolina, where they are also the state fruit. The mother scuppernong vine allegedly still produces grapes on Roanoke Island, which, of course, adds to the allure.
As I’ve grown more interested in these wild grapes, I’ve found a place for them in my ever-present desire for drink. Two summers ago, I tried a variation on the Pimm’s Cup. I muddled and pressed the ripe fruit for juice and bitter skin flavor, then mixed them in a tall glass with gin, lemonade and ginger beer. With a straw, these went down quickly.
For a later “up” version, I added a few dashes of homemade dry-hopped grapefruit bitters to coat the glass, substituted fresh-squeezed lemon for lemonade and cut out the ginger, still muddling a mixture of muscadines and scuppernongs for bitter, earthy skin flavor. The bright hop citrus nose opened the sweet and tart of juice and fruit and mixed well with the herby-dry Pimm’s-gin blend, then finished with a nice bitter bite of grapefruit. Spearing a few more grapes of varying size and color over the concoction, I felt like I’d accomplished something.
Last summer, I went bourbon. I’m always looking for a way to drink whiskey in the summer, and the sweetness of the muscadine has always made it a great way to cut the heat in August. I was at least discovering a different variation on the theme. I added lemon juice because it helps brighten most things, and a bit of sherry for good measure, then, following the hoppy nose from the previous summer, I eventually floated a barspoon of Islay Scotch on top of the cocktail as a subtle promise of the cool-weather campfires to come. Some called it Smokey Bourbon Sherry Grapes, others the Grapes of Wrath.
This summer, time is ticking, as grapes are ripening. We have to use what we can and save what’s left for warm fall days. Heavy end of season vines call for a shrub. The preserving elixir comes from shared time between mashed fruit and apple cider vinegar, both cooled and simmering, with a bit of added sugar. It can serve as an old-fashioned health remedy, fruit preservative, or simple drinking vinegar. It lasts forever in the fridge, they say. The color is an earthy red, deep pink and purple, and it’s that particular hue that defines this year’s end of summer/early autumn refresher.
The recipe is a simple take on a Gin Fizz, muddling both muscadines and scuppernongs for sweetness and skin flavor with the tart shrub, lemon juice, and a splash of simple syrup, then shaking it cold with Aperol and Gin and topping the mix with soda water, which has a nice balancing effect on the all the strong flavors. With this drink, I got somewhere, tapped into the duality of these wild southern grapes, welcoming their similarities and differences even when I couldn’t tell which was which.
So after all these attempts and creations and concoctions and trips to a nearly abandoned grape grove, I still find myself back to my first musings. On a warm sunny day, early fall now, a wicker satchel full of grapes of various colors, shapes, and sizes and flavors already in hand, thinking about family trips while spitting seeds at my friends’ kid, I was wondering what the difference was between a muscadine and a scuppernong, really, and whether it mattered at all.
I submit that you really can’t always tell what’s what when you’re picking from the vine. And varied grapes become the vine for living. Sure, if you go to a big produce company with labeled fruit at the grocery store, the red ones are the muscadines, dummy. But on the vine, there is more variation, gradation, ingratiation, inspiration. Every corner of the wild grove can have a different mix, a different ripening, a different skin and juice—like most things that are really alive and worth enjoying. Part of the fun is finding a place where you can spend some time picking fruit, welcoming the ambiguity and not worrying about the details. Best to enjoy what’s ripe while it lasts and preserve what you can for posterity, or at least for the fall.