Concord

Concord is a Vitis labrusca selection raised by Ephraim Bull in Concord, Massachusetts, and first fruited in 1849. It is an American species, not the European vinifera, and that is the whole of its character. It is hardy in cold that would kill a European vine, it resists the mildews and the phylloxera louse that are native to the same continent, and it grows almost anywhere in the eastern United States.

It carries a powerful aroma the trade calls foxy, from methyl anthranilate, which is the flavour Americans recognise as grape juice, grape jelly and grape soda, because those products are made from it. To a palate trained on vinifera it reads as artificial, which is unfair, since the flavouring was copied from the grape rather than the other way round.

Most of the crop is juice and jelly. The wine made from it is usually sweet, because the grape is high in acid and low in sugar and needs both correcting, and it is the basis of much traditional American kosher wine. New York, Michigan, Ohio and Washington grow most of it. It is also widely planted in Brazil, Japan and South Korea.