A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus Vitis.
Grapes can be eaten fresh as table grapes, used for making wine, jam, grape juice, jelly, grape seed extract, vinegar, and grape seed oil, or dried as raisins, currants and sultanas. Grapes are a non-climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters.
The Middle East is generally described as the homeland of grape and the cultivation of this plant began there 6,000–8,000 years ago. 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 archaeological evidence for a dominant position of wine-making in human culture dates from 8,000 years ago in Georgia.
The oldest known winery was found in Armenia, dating to around 4000 BC. 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 Syrah red wine is named after Shiraz, a city in Persia where the grape was used to make Shirazi wine.
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. 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. 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.
In North America, native grapes belonging to various species of the genus Vitis 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 Vitis labrusca vines to create the Concord grape which would become an important agricultural crop in the United States.
Raw grapes are 81% water, 18% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and have negligible fat . A 31⁄2-ounce reference amount of raw grapes supplies 69 kilo calories of food energy and a moderate amount of vitamin K (14% of the Daily Value), with no other micronutrients in significant content.
Wine grapes also tend to be very sweet: they are harvested at the time when their juice is approximately 24% sugar by weight. By comparison, commercially produced "100% grape juice", made from table grapes, is usually around 15% sugar by weight.
Although adoption of wine consumption is generally not recommended by health authorities, some research indicates moderate consumption, such as one glass of red wine a day for women and two for men, may confer health benefits. Alcohol itself may have protective effects on the cardiovascular system.
Here in Oregon we have a winery close by in Gold Hill. The Del Rio Winery is a nice place to go and taste wine.......
- 1 pie crust (make your own or use store bought!)
- 4 large tomatoes (sliced thickly)
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- pepper to taste
- 1/4 cup green onions (sliced)
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- 1 cup cheddar cheese (grated)
- 1/4 cup bacon (sliced into 1 inch pieces and cooked)
- Place the tomato slices on the bottom of the pie shell in one or two layers and sprinkle with the sugar, pepper and green onions.
- Mix the mayonnaise, cheese and bacon and spread over the tomatoes.
- Bake in a preheated 400º oven until golden brown and bubbling, about 20-30 minutes.
It was in the early 1920s began to be listed as an ingredient in cookies.