Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Scuffinnahves

Seven years ago, I married and moved with my husband to his home-town Tallahassee. Until then, I'd been a bit of a transatlantic nomad; my rather homogenized accent picked up and dumped flavor without loyalty. Shortly after I began work in my new town, a co-worker came into staff-meeting with a container full of mixed green and purple orbs the size of large "boulder" marbles. I inquired, and she replied in her slow, smoky drawl, "Skuffinnahves."

"Uh, ... what was that?"
"Skuffinnahves."
"Skuffin-knives?"
She nodded,"Skuffinnahves."

Even as a fellow American, I was a foreigner as I encountered this new word and struggled to sort pronunciation from spelling. She invited me to try one. I selected a green one. My teeth sank through thick, tart, leathery skin into cool, gelatinous, grape-candy flesh and finally crushed astringent, slightly bitter seeds. As odd as it may sound to locals, I felt like I'd landed on the moon.

A mission to find more quickly turned up plenty of labeled containers of "Scuppernong" and "Muscadine" grapes. Scupp-er-nong. Skuffinnahves. Last night, after finding scuppernongs at New Leaf and remembering my introduction to the fruit, I asked Matt if he'd ever heard the word pronounced this way. No, he hadn't.

These fat grapes have a love-it-or-hate-it flavor often described as "musky" or "foxy." Some prefer to split the skins (which are thick and can be bracingly astringent) and eat only the clear, sweet pulp. Personally, I enjoy the contrasts of sour and sweet and leathery and slippery. The purple grapes (muscadines) are sweeter than the green, and they're best when they've ripened and softened slightly past their taut fullness. Muscadines are on my "sexy foods" list.

Scuppernongs grow wild in parts of the South. I remember seeing them hanging unripe from vines all around Tallulah Gorge near Atlanta. Do they also grow wild here? There is a vexing weed that grows here, that looks remarkably like the scuppernong vine but does not produce the fruit.

I found these suppernongs from Ladybird Organics/ Monticello Vinyards at New Leaf yesterday. New Leaf also sometimes carries the local farm's muscadine jelly, sunflower sprouts, and eggs.

I'm told that New Leaf carries Monticello Vinyard's muscadine wine for a day, or an hour -- blink and it's gone. One can also order it online from the Ladybird Organics/Monticello Vinyard's website. I vaguely remember hearing or reading that you can pick your own grapes there sometimes. The farm also boasts persimmons, pecans, satsumas, marsh grapefruit, meyer lemons, and microgreens. Visit the website for more information.

72 comments:

  1. Scuppernongs used to grow wild on Tower Road (off Capital Circle NW), back when it was a dirt road and way out of the city.

    BFF,
    Miss T

    ReplyDelete
  2. They used to grow wild around the Short Street area, up off Tennessee and Magnolia, too.

    I don't know anyone who eats the skin. That sounds nasty to me. But hey, to each their own. I've been known to pick up a bag of scuppernongs from the flea market and have eaten the whole mess - dropping skins and spitting seeds all the way - before I get back in my car.

    They're on the list with things like boiled peanuts and smoked mullet that I love introducing to nonlocals.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I actually talked this morning to a woman who lives east of Monticello and she says she eats the whole grape- skin, seeds, sweet flesh and all. They have four acres planted in scuppernongs and muscadines. They plan to start making wine.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have also heard them called "bullets" -- we pick them at a farm and make communion wine for church - we do this in South Georgia:

    http://cathyknits.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/09/and_they_stompe.html

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ahhhh, this is all too wonderful!

    Miss T., you know where all the wild things grow, from scuppernongs to Hoot Gibson!

    Downtown guy -- you've gotten scuppernongs from the flea market? The flea market on Capital Circle? Where do you get your smoked mullet from?

    Ms. Moon -- Thanks, I'm glad I'm not the only one that eats the whole grape (although I don't chew the seeds anymore, and if I'm not feeling too lazy, I spit them out).

    I wonder if I can convince Matt to make some muscadine wine for me. He doesn't like the grapes at all -- it would have to be a labor of love.

    Cathy -- I love the your blog and the bullet stomping! I looked at the videos, too, and thought that my son ought to be stomping grapes!!! I'm sending my parents a link to your blog entry -- my mother is a D.O.K., and my father grows grapes. Perhaps they'll start scheming a grape stomping for the Church in Santa Fe.

    ReplyDelete
  6. One thing about grape stomping - a lot of folks got itchy legs after being in the grapes and juice. We had a place where they cleaned their feet prior to stomping and after stomping to help get the itchy off!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ah, yes! The first time I tasted scuppernongs was years ago in Bristol, in a small grocery store. I bit into the first one, chewed it, took out the pit, and swallowed. The cashier looked at me as though I was from another planet, and said, "Around here we generally spit out the hull." Hull, meaning the skin.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Under the rubric "Slow Food," here's a great slow food blog, a personal favorite of mine: Slow Food in Wales

    ReplyDelete
  9. Charless, thank you so much for sharing -- love it! I still eat the hulls....

    I love the blog you linked -- I grew up in Great Britain (uh, well, opposite coast, different country -- near Cambridge, England, but there was still a surge of familiarity that came from reading her blog). One of the beautiful things about being an alien just about everywhere is the unending novelty of place. It doesn't go away -- I've been "back" in Florida for fourteen years now, but it is still full of surprises for me.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I visited Lady Bird Organics earlier this month and picked loads of scuppernongs (I like the skins, too, but then again, I'm a Yankee...) and made a spicy grape apple butter with them. Will make nice Christmas gifts. This Sunday the Monticello Vineyard is having an open house between 2 and 5 p.m., I'm planning to drop in.

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