Muscadine Choices

General Fruit Growing
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Hello everyone!
If I don’t post in the right spot or make a mistake, please forgive me. I am new to the forum.

I am also new to growing muscadine‘s, but I did try some at a winery in Georgia. I am in Northern California zone 8a.

I ordered 3 vines from Ison’s – Paulk, Big Red, and Hall.

I am interested in trying to make muscadine wine, fresh, eating, and maybe even a tart like I saw someone demonstrate on the site. I’m getting into canning so I might try to figure out what I can do with Muscadine‘s in that regard.

I am off grid, so freezing is not a good option for me unless it’s already freezing here ha ha.

I missed out on Ruby Crisp, although I don’t know what I’m missing.

Anyone have any opinions on the three that I picked?

I do not have the vines yet. I just ordered them for the next shipping season.

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Well @Auburn , what do you think?

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Big Red is probably a good muscadine but I don’t have any experience with it. I think Hall and Paulk are two great choices. Paulk is almost as large as Supreme but is self fertile, has a high dry scar ratio, and tends to have a good fruit to vine ratio. Hall has similar traits as Paulk except that it is a little smaller and bronze. Both are doing well at my location but it would only be an assumption that they would perform as well somewhere else. Example of Hall is that I planted a vine January 2021 and I just picked 63 pounds off it and there is another 10 remaining on it.

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Wishing you much success with muscadines. Since I dont drink alcohol not making wine but my son has made some decent (he says) quality wines from muscadines. Without getting into specific cultivars in my opinion is the black cultivars are the absolute best flavored. Rubycrisp seems to be in short supply. UGA is still breeding muscadines so who knows what we may be treated to in the future? Randy/GA

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I don’t drink wine either so I won’t be making any. I’m going to start making some juice, jelly, and jam from some of my muscadines.

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@Auburn … are the skins on your Oh My muscadines thin / tender enoutgh to eat ?

Or… do you think you could simmer and mash the whole dimes 8 minutes… and jam made from that would be ok… . Skins soft enough to eat with the jam ?

In my low sugar chia jam… you simmer the fruit or berries 8 min.

Thanks

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I eat the skin and all and they probably will do well in jam. Chia jam sounds good.

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My making jam experience is limited so I hesitate to say a lot about it. It might take a little longer than 8 minutes to get the desired skin tenderness.

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Wow, what a great harvest! How chewy is the skin?

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I squeeze out the seed and pulp leaving the skin and juice. Boil juice and skins for about 10 minutes, then run them through a fruit pulper. Skin is left in the pulper while juice and pulp are separated. I use juice and pulp to make jelly and an almost marmalade. With a bit of tweaking, I can make muscadine syrup which is fantastic on pancakes and waffles.

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Does anyone freeze those muscadines so that they retain vitamins as much as possible?

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How chewy the skin is depends on the variety. Examples are Lane and Black Beauty. The skin on these breaks as you chew it. Both are pleasant to eat whole except for the bitter seeds. Some of the newer varieties like Hall and Paulk are also less chewy.

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I have several gallons of frozen muscadines in my freezer.

Higgins is an older variety that had very thin skin. It has several serious flaws, but has been used extensively in breeding. Modern cultivars with thin skin usually trace back to Higgins.

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The muscadine wine I tasted in Georgia was sweet, like something you’d have a little of after dinner.

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Do you just make jelly out of the juice? Jam would use fruit pulp right?Have you tried a steam juicer?

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Muscadine juice is sweet, aromatic, and not acidic. Muscadine wine is not considered very good in comparison with standard wine grapes. About 25 years ago, a guy near Talladega Alabama was working on breeding for better wine traits and had a variety that tested very good for wine making. I wish I remembered more from the article I read. IIRC, it was in a copy of a magazine published by the electric power cooperative.

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Is there any better variety than Big Red muscadine ( size and sweetness)?

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Big Red has a weakness of slow initial growth. It can overload with fruit leading to winter death. It is female which means a pollinator is needed. Big Red is a very good muscadine but IMO Supreme is better overall even considering Big Red is sweeter. I don’t yet have enough experience with Paulk to decide where it fits.

We are in a stage where muscadines are being bred with new traits that will dramatically change the varieties recommended. Higgins was top dog @50 years ago. Nobody plants Higgins today.

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No wine is sweet, regardless of what fruit it comes from, or for that matter what sugar (look up sugarcane wine) unless fermentation is stopped before all the sugars are eaten by the yeast. Alternately sugars can be added after fermentation and the desired alcohol level is reached.

Any wine that tastes sweet is one of those two.

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Shibumi, Muscadine wines start with so much sugar that fermentation stops before all the sugar has been metabolized. Sweet wine is the result. Lower sugar varieties such as Carlos, Noble, and Doreen are used for wine making for this reason.

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