I think I may have told this story once before when I was doing research and trying to identify my grapes, but I’ll tell it again because the grapes continue to struggle along and I think I may actually see fruit one day. My grandfather was an immigrant to America from a rural area outside of Naples, Italy back in the 1920s. He brought with him only the clothes on his back, a few dollars in his pocket and the contents of a small boot trunk. Inside of one of his boots in the trunk was a cutting from the family vineyards. Although he became a proud American, he was also proud of his culture and wanted to remember the fruit and the wine of his youth (remember, they were Italians). Every time that Grandpa moved after coming to America, he took a new cutting and he always cared for his family grapes and made barrels of wine over the years from the large, black Italian fruit. When Grandpa was getting old, my brother took a cutting and has kept the grape ever since and I’ve recently gotten a cutting from him. Sadly, my zone 5A winter temperatures don’t really do these Mediterranean grapes any favors and I suffered terrible winter die-back for the first 2 or 3 years that it was in the ground in my orchard. This most recent winter it’s done better though and my son and I put in a small arbor for it yesterday. Here is Grandpa’s grape (the other tiny little guy on the left is a Canadice).
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grow it in pot，you may taste the grape sooner
I actually cut off one of the stems this morning and should probably start a cutting in a pot.