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Scuppernong
Scuppernong Wine
| Early
settlers to America, called the sweet, musk-scented wild grapes they
found here by the same name as the sweet grapes they had known in
Europe, muscat, from the Latin muscus, which describes the smell of a
male musk deer. Over time the name became muscadine.
Scuppernong with its
tough skin is a greenish, or bronze, variety of muscadine. In the
beginning it was known as the 'big white grape'. During the 17th and
18th centuries cuttings of the mother vine were placed into production
around Scuppernong, North Carolina. The name Scuppernong originally
comes from an Algonquin Indian name, Ascopo for the sweet bay tree.
Ascupernung, meaning place of the Ascopo, appears on early maps of North
Carolina as the name of a river in Washington County.
The first record of these
grapes occurs in the log book of Giovanni de Verrazano, who in 1524
discovered them in the Cape Fear River Valley. He wrote that he saw
"Many vines growing naturally there that without doubt would yield
excellent wines."
In 1584, a member of Sir
Walter Raleigh's exploration wrote that "The coast of North
Carolina was so full of grapes that the very beating and surge of the
sea overflowed them. In all the world, a similar abundance was not to be
found."
Also discovering the Scuppernong "mother-vine" on Roanoke
Island they introduced it elsewhere. The vine has a trunk 2 feet thick,
and it along with some neighboring vines supplied the Mother Vineyard
Winery, which operated in Manteo until 1954.
Scuppernong
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