If you’ve spent time in the South (or in the produce section
of a Whole Foods), you’re probably familiar with the muscadine grape. Native to
the southern United States, muscadines are enormous, thick-skinned globules
with an intense flavor that falls somewhere between that of a Concord grape and
a purple Jolly Rancher. As you might imagine, they also make an intriguing wine
that’s as full of funk as the name of their most common variety: scuppernong.
Would you like to try some? Too bad. You can’t get it in Boston,
anywhere.
Call around asking for muscadine wine, and you’ll only be
corrected. “You must mean Muscadet,” said nearly every restaurant and wine-shop
staffer I contacted. When you insist that there is such a thing as muscadine,
you will be met with a long, befuddled pause. “Never heard of it” usually
follows.
Even Hungry Mother and Tupelo, the Southern-cuisine darlings of
Cambridge, aren’t pouring muscadine, despite their celebration of other
regional oddities, like the boiled peanut. Our sophisticated city is rife with
vintages from such distant lands as South Africa, Chile, and Australia, and
while you can even buy wine from Georgia, the country, you won’t find any from
Georgia, the state. That is, unless you special order it, and you should.
Does muscadine have the complexity of a chalky chablis or the
depth of a leathery merlot? Not remotely. But it has a distinctive flavor, a
sweet, full-fruit taste with an unmistakable twang that you simply won’t find
in any other wine, a twang that says “I am not from France; I am from the South
— deal with it.”
There’s much talk of terroir these days,
especially when it comes to wine, and here is a grape that, unlike most of what
we drink, was actually meant to grow on this continent. Muscadines have been
here since well before white people, and they still grow wild on Southern soil.
Maybe we should stop mimicking European standards; perhaps muscadine is what
American wine should really taste like.
Since muscadine has yet to catch on beyond its home turf, much of
what you’ll find is inexpensive and produced by small, family-run vineyards. Aficionados
could therefore consider almost any muscadine a single-varietal country wine.
That means you’re less likely to get flavors faked by additives or wine made
from dehydrated grape powder that was shipped around the world before being
reconstituted. Reach for a “Big Wine” product in the same price range, and you
can’t be so sure.
Have your neighborhood wine shop order you a bottle; we spoke
with several, including Downtown Wine and Spirits
(225 Elm Street, Somerville, 617.625.7777) and Federal Wine & Spirits
(29 State Street, Boston, 617.367.8605), and they were all up for the
challenge. Muscadine tends to run sweet, so go for anything with “dry” in the
description (and even those will be on the sweeter side). At the very least,
you’ll have a good excuse to say “scuppernong” out loud.
