What a winter is has been, but spring is finally here! If you're looking for a sweet and healthy addition to spring celebrations and snacks, fresh Chilean grapes are the perfect pick.
Grapes come in different colors (green, red, black), but did you know that there are also numerous varieties? Each variety has its own unique size, shape, flavor and texture. The next time you're in the produce department, check to see what your supermarket is selling and try different varieties to see which is your favorite!
In addition to their great taste, grapes from Chile pack a powerful nutritional punch. Grapes contain various phytonutrients that can help strengthen the immune system. Grapes are also high in vitamin C, which helps the body fight infections. But wait, there's more! Chilean grapes are a great source of potassium, as well as bone-building vitamin K, and a standard ¾-cup serving contains just 90 calories.
When you purchase grapes, you might notice that they have a waxy white film. That's called "bloom" and it's good! Bloom is produced by the plant itself , and it helps to keep the grapes fresh, so best not to wash it off until you're ready to eat the grapes.
There's another reason why you should wait to wash your grapes. Washing adds moisture that can cause the grapes to start to decompose faster than they normally would 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.[1][2] 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.[3][4][5]
The oldest known winery was found in Armenia, dating to around 4000 BC.[6] 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 Surah red wine is named after Shiraz, a city in Persia where the grape was used to make Shirazi wine.[7]
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics record the cultivation of purple grapes, and history attests to the ancient Greeks, Cypriots, Phoenicians, and Romans growing purple grapes both for eating and wine production.[8] The growing of grapes would later spread to other regions in Europe, as well as North Africa, and eventually in North America.
In 2005 a team of archaeologists concluded that some Chalcolithic wine jars, which were discovered in Cyprus in the 1930s, were the oldest of their kind in the world, dating back to 3,500 BC.[9] Moreover, Commandaria, a sweet dessert wine from Cyprus, is the oldest manufactured wine in the world, its origins traced as far back as 2000 BC.[10]
In North America, native grapes belonging to various species of the genus Virus proliferate in the wild across the continent, and were a part of the diet of many Native Americans, but were considered by early European colonists to be unsuitable for wine. In the 19th century, Ephraim Bull of Concord, Massachusetts, cultivated seeds from wild Virus Labrusco vines to create the Concord grape which would become an important agricultural crop in the United States.[11]
Description
Grapes are a type of fruit that grow in clusters of 15 to 300, and can be crimson, black, dark blue, yellow, green, orange, and pink. "White" grapes are actually green 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.[12] Anthocyanins and other pigment chemicals of the larger family of polyphenols in purple grapes are responsible for the varying shades of purple in red wines.[13][14] Grapes are typically an ellipsoid shape resembling a pronate spheroid.
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 (14% of the Daily Value), with no other micronutrients in significant content.
Grapevines
Main article: Virus
Concord is a variety of North American Labrusco grape
Most domesticated grapes come from cultivars of Virus infer, a grapevine native to the Mediterranean and Central Asia.
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