Probably the most important thing to note is that Muscadine is NOT the same thing as “Muscat” [e.g. Muscat Sevre et Maine Sur Lie] or “Moscato” [e.g. Moscato d’Asti].
In fact, Muscadine is not even Vitis vinifera - it’s Vitis rotundifolia.
In general, you can’t even breed a vinifera [chromosome number 2n = 38] with a rotundifolia [chromosome number 2n = 40], although there are people who claim that they were successful.
Anyway, native North American grapes, like Muscadine, present a VASTLY different flavor profile than what you’ll be accustomed to if you’re coming from the point of view of European vinifera.
Down here, we typically see Muscadine vinified as a dessert wine, and, while sweet, it will tend to be accompanied by some bitter notes, which people sometimes call “foxy” or “fetid” [in vension or duck, you’d say that those bitter notes were “gamey”].
Not the same as “Melon de Bourgogne” [e.g., Muscadet Sèvre et Maine], either.
To the original question:
The Muscadine cultivar Scuppernong was widely grown in Eastern North Carolina where I grew up Homemade Scuppernong wines were fairly common - most very sweet and unappealing (to me), some off-dry and reasonably tasty (that from someone who enjoys the flavor of Scuupernong grapes). Commercial examples are available. Duplin Winery in Rose Hill NC is a well-known producer. See if these tasting notes entice you to give it a try: Scuppernong Woo Hoo! – De Long
Scuppernong, yes.
Muscadine wines from other cultivars (and even a few from Scuppernong) are also produced in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Texas.
Southerner here - there’s a great quote about Muscadine wine from an old Dan Berger article in the LA Times (I claim fair use):
World’s Worst Wine ?
Dan Berger
Los Angeles Times Mar 18, 1992, H, 33:2 LA
Just Because you love wine doesn’t mean you love all wine.
Consider Muscadine, the wines made from the fruit of the native American species Vitis rotundifolia, which is more like a berry than a grape. Muscadine wines have been made in the Carolinas and in the Gulf Coast states for more than 100 years. They are rarely distributed outside of local areas. No wonder.
My first experience with these wines came a few years ago when I was asked to judge a half dozen Muscadine wines at a national wine competition. The server brought out the tray with six glasses and placed them in front of me.
When I took a whiff of the first wine, I thought a decade-old fruitcake, now rotten and covered with mold, had been brought into the room. The aroma was pungent with a kind of moldy earthiness and a top note of petroleum.
The second wine was no improvement, the wines were all equally bizarre and all cloyingly sweet. When I tasted them I literally gagged. A fellow judge heard my feeble cry and said he too had never experience anything like it.
We struggled on. It was hopeless. In desperation, I finally advised the coordinator of the wine competition that I was so put off by the wines I needed a break. My fellow judge said he couldn’t go on.
Just then our server walked by the table and heard the commotion.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked.
“The Muscadines,” said the coordinator of the event. “The judges don’t like them.”
“Yeah?” the server said. “Well, my wife used to drink them all the time. Let me smell them. Maybe they’re spoiled.” He lifted a glass sniffed and said: “Same stuff my wife used to drink. Used to put a cinnamon stick in it.”
“Oh, really?” said the coordinator. “So how does that one strike you? Is it pretty good?”
“Hey,” he said, “don’t ask me I wouldn’t touch that stuff.”
All that said, I’ve made some with just a little residual sugar. If you let it age about 5-10 years, the distinctive aroma diminishes and it is better.
Had the opportunity to try some a few months ago while in NC. They’re unique, to say the least. I certainly didn’t hate them, but I’d put them in the same category as “fruit wines” (cherry, blueberry, apple, etc.). The ones I had were all too sweet/cloying to be considered anything other than dessert wines, but they had a weird funky earthiness (mustiness?) about them that was off-putting. I wouldn’t go as far as calling it moldy fruitcake, but it’s definitely different.
I’ve tried muscadine wines in NC, GA, and TN. Almost all were pretty bad to my palate, offputting foxiness that made me want to spit and/or hurl. One I enjoyed enough as a sweet dessert wine to actually purchase a bottle or two was from Stonehaus, Crossville, TN
One wine that I like is the Duplin wine “Carolina black river red”. However, I do agree that it tastes different than other wines.The taste reminds me of the scuppernongs that may be tasted along the Rte 17 walking park, in Chesapeake Va. All I can say about it is, that when I tasted the grape, I thought 'this would be a great wine grape.'But yes, it is a more berrylike grape than many, and it does have moscat-like overtones in the grape itself. I think it might be gallic acid or something.That said, if you like wine, I would not advise starting with a muscadine wine. Rather, get some muscadine grapes. Taste the grape, and think, what would I want a wine from this grape to taste like? Some grapes, you might well say, ‘a wine made with this grape should taste like it was a million miles away’. Others, though, you might well be able to imagine a good wine. That being the case, then look for wines made with that grape. Taste the grape, then taste the wine, and judge the wine based on that.
Since the original discussion, I have spent a fair amount of time wondering about a revival of what you might call “Paleo” cuisine - authentic food with authentic flavors from colonial [or even pre-colonial] America.
Something that would combine the very bitter tastes of fresh venison and turnips and squash and wild onions [really wild garlic] and “foxy” muscadine grapes and a “coffee” or “tea” made from the caffeine of the [u]Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria)[/u].
And desserts made from pre-modern Hickory varietals [or even Hackberries], which existed prior to the introduction of modern Pecans [and modern Pecan horticulture] in the late 19th Century.
Then, of course, the trick would be whether you could make the stuff even remotely palatable to modern sensibilities [without cheating and using cane sugar or Crisco lard or Morton’s Salt or whatever].
Back when I was a kid, this sort of thing - “survivalist cuisine”, you might call it - was all the rage with the [u]“Foxfire” books[/u].
And it seems like something which might appeal to the Hipsters - “Renaissance Cuisine Day” at Jamestown or Old Salem or Shaker Village - with all the scuppernong wine you can guzzle.
It also might be fun [or at least illuminating] for children in a science class - to learn what food used to taste like, back in the old days [not that most of them would be able to swallow it].
But those classical flavors are very, very foreign to the modern palate.
PS: One of the saddest things that I’ve ever heard in my life was little Birdie Africa - in the MOVE Hearings, about the Osage Avenue disaster - talking about how only the grownups were allowed to eat “cook (sic) food”, and how he and his siblings were supposed to eat cold raw turnips, and how they would be severely beaten when they tried to steal the cooked vegetables which were meant for the adults.
The wild garlic–I think you might mean ramps–is delicious from what I’ve heard, but be careful, because many things that look like wild onions can be from the lily family, and deadly poison.
Likewise, I think you want to avoid the holly vomitoria. Traditional tea not withstanding, its name comes from the fact that it too is toxic, though the natural reaction may help protect from poisoning.
Now to your point… . yes, and I think that they do those things at colonial williamsburg. But if they did or not, it still would be worth trying. Remember chapter 8 of All Creatures Great and small by Herriot: he got drunk tasting the strangest wines made by a farmer: elderflower, turnip wine, and so on. Very good cooking wines can also be made (no cooking wine should be a bad drinking wine) because the nature of alcohol is to dissolve and carry flavor.
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