One of the plants that I had in the old garden, which didn’t make it into the new garden, was a grape vine. A grape vine (or two) has been on my wish list – I want them to grow over the arbour. I had other plans for the arbour this summer, with climbing cucurbits the order of the day, but sadly those plans didn’t come to fruition.
So when I discovered that Victorian Nursery Gardens are offering a 25% discount on grape vines until 7th August, it felt like the right time to take the plunge. Now my particular interest at the moment is in vine leaves, and in a 2014 article on grape vines in the Guardian, Stephen Shirley from Victoriana offered up some variety advice:
“Shirley recommends ‘Pinot Noir’ or ‘Pinot Blanc’, which are easier to stuff and roll, because the leaves are less segmented.”
Having looked at the Victoriana website, Pinot Blanc is a wine grape whilst Pinot Noir is a dual-purpose eating/wine grape, so I chose the latter. To clamber over the other side of the arbour, and give us a different sort of grape, I have chosen Lakemont, a seedless white grape with a sweet flavour almost like honey.
[]If you want to save 25% on grape vines from Victoriana, then you’ll have to order by 7th August and use the offer code GRAPES. Visitors from this site always save 10% at Victoriana; you won’t get an extra 10% off your grape vines, but you should get it on anything else you order 🙂 ]Way back in 2014 (well, it feels like a long time ago!) I published some advice on growing grape vines in small gardens and making the most out of them, as part of my Glutbusters series. So now we’ve bought the grape vine, and planted it out, what are we doing with it, beyond eating the grapes or making wine?
Rose Water & Orange Blossoms explains how to identify, clean, and store fresh grape leaves, whilst WNYC shares secrets For Perfect Stuffed Grape Leaves. The Herbangardener shows us how to make your own pickled grape leaves. In The Witches Kitchen vine leaves are used to make Little Greek Yoghurt Pies.
Moving on from grape leaves, you can learn about Grape must, aka petimezei, an ancient healthy sweetener from Diane Kochilas, and how to make verjuice with Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. Verjuice, or verjus is a souring agent that was commonly used in various cultures before globalization meant you could get lemons anywhere.
So we’ve eaten the fruit, and the leaves, and used the juice – sweet and sour. But hang on, there’s more! Could there be a plant more versatile than the grape vine? Perhaps not. Modern Farmer have been pondering the next amazing health food: the seeds of wine grapes, so perhaps we ought to stop spitting them out. And Scientific American have been looking into the nutritional potential of grape pomace flour. Pomace (the seeds, skins, and pulp leftover from winemaking)…
has been used as compost or converted to fertilizer and animal feed. However, pomace is packed with nutrients, leading to an interest in exploring its use in food.
So we can take a Whole Vine approach to grape vines!
@BackyardLarder @jwPillar @emmathegardener That’s tonight’s dinner sorted 🙂
— Nic Wilson (@nicmama) July 29, 2016
If you’re feeling sad now that you don’t have a grape vine of your own, and you’re not currently in a position to add one to your garden, then don’t despair! You may be able to forage for some, depending on where you live in the world. Although in the US it doesn’t sound particularly easy to identify the different species – as Eat the Weeds discovers in Grapes of Path. And there are plenty of other species with leaves you can stuff! But we will have to explore those another day. Enjoy your weekend!
You can make wine from the prunings of the vines too – its called Folly. Another use for the versatile vine.
I like to line a dish with vine leaves, fill with mushrooms, top with more leaves and bake in the oven – or wrap a trout in leaves and bake. The fish skin comes away with the leaves.
Ooh, thanks for sharing, Carole! I hadn’t come across Folly before, and your recipes using vine leaf wrappings sound lovely!
The vine wood is very good for barbecues.
Ah yes, thanks for the reminder Audrey. Something useful to do with any prunings 🙂
I’ve trained a Phoenix grape vine up the sunny side of our house and it’s going really well. I have to say that wine is top of my list of things to use the grapes for! I must confess I’d overlooked using the leaves, though, so I’ll have to give this a try.
I don’t think I can be bothered with the faffing about needed to make wine 😉 but you never know! Ryan is thinking he wants to get into cider making, so perhaps wine will be the next logical step! We don’t have a lot of space for storing carboys though….