muscadine

The word muscadine derives from French muscadin or muscat, ultimately from Latin muscus meaning musk — the grape's characteristic musky fragrance. The Vitis rotundifolia, native to the southeastern United States, was being cultivated by Indigenous peoples along the Atlantic coast before European contact. The oldest cultivated muscadine vine still living — the 'Mother Vine' on Roanoke Island in North Carolina — is estimated to be 400-500 years old.

Giovanni da Verrazzano, exploring the North Carolina coast in 1524, wrote admiringly of the wild grapes he found growing in the forests. Sir Walter Raleigh's colonists at Roanoke in the 1580s encountered the same vines. Thomas Harriot's 1588 account of the Virginia colony described two types of grapes, one of which was clearly muscadine. The grape was the most abundant wild fruit the first English settlers encountered.

Indigenous peoples of the Southeast — Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and many others — had long used muscadines for food, medicine, and ceremony. The grape tolerates the heat, humidity, and fungal diseases that kill European Vitis vinifera vines. This resistance made muscadine invaluable when 19th-century European vineyards were devastated by phylloxera — the muscadine's rootstock was used to save French wine.

The muscadine remains a distinctive product of the American South. Scuppernong — a bronze muscadine variety named for the Scuppernong River in North Carolina — is the source of many traditional Southern wines and preserves. The name Scuppernong comes from an Algonquian word for the place where the vine grows thickly.