Grapes

A fruit whose importance is almost entirely about what happens after it is picked — wine, vinegar, raisins and molasses far outweigh grapes eaten as fruit.

Where it comes from

Vitis vinifera was domesticated in the South Caucasus, in the region of modern Georgia and Armenia, where the winemaking evidence is the oldest anywhere. From there it spread through the Near East and around the whole Mediterranean, following, and often driving, trade.

Grape skins carry wild yeasts, which is why crushed grapes ferment without anything being added. Wine is close to inevitable once grapes are stored in quantity, and vinegar is what happens next if air gets in.

Varieties

• Wine grapes — Small, thick-skinned, very sweet, full of seeds. Unpleasant to eat and correct for fermenting.
• Table grapes — Bred large, thin-skinned and usually seedless.
• Raisins, sultanas, currants — Dried grapes of different varieties and treatments. Sweetness and body in both savoury and sweet dishes.
• Verjuice — Pressed unripe grapes. Sour without being vinegar, and used across Persian, Georgian and medieval European cooking.
• Pekmez and vincotto — Grape must boiled to a syrup. A sweetener across Turkey, the Levant and southern Italy.
• Vine leaves — Not fruit but a wrapping — dolma, sarma, and their relatives all round the eastern Mediterranean.

In the kitchen

Wine in cooking is acid, alcohol and flavour. The alcohol mostly leaves; the acid and flavour do not, which is why a wine too rough to drink makes a harsh sauce.

Verjuice does what lemon or vinegar does but with a rounder, fruitier sourness, and it is the missing ingredient in a great many historical recipes that now call for lemon.

Raisins in a savoury dish are doing the same job as sugar in a tomato sauce — balancing acid — as well as adding texture.

Grapes is tagged on 238 dishes from 75 countries in the atlas. These notes are written from general knowledge and carry no per-fact citation — see About.