The white grape variety originates from the USA. Synonyms are American Muscadine, Big White Grape, Bull, Bullace, Bullage, Bullet, Bullet Grape, Green Muscadine, Green Scuppernong, Hickman's Grape, Pedee, Roanoke, White Muscadine, White Scuppernong and Yellow Muscadine. It is an all-female grape variety and one of the few examples of the sub-genus Muscadinia species Vitis rotundifolia. Alongside Alexander, Catawba, Concord, Niagara White and Norton, it is one of the most important historical varieties in the USA. It was one of the first American vines from which an attempt was made to press a wine. All Muscadinia vines are often incorrectly labelled as Scuppernong. It is probably directly descended from wild vines. The large, spherical berries are white-green to bronze in colour, so it is thought to be a somatic mutation (loss of colour) of the dark-berried Vitis rotundifolia.
Discovery
The vines were discovered, selected and vinified by English and German settlers in North Carolina on the banks of the Scuppernong River in the 1660s. The name is derived from "Ascupernung", which means "place where Ascopo grows" (laurel tree) in the Native American Algonquin language. The vine was first mentioned much earlier by the Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazano (1485-1528), when he explored the Cape Fear River valley (eastern North Carolina) in French service and found many "naturally growing vines". However, as he does not mention any berry colour, it could have been the dark-coloured wild vine.
These wild vines may also have been involved when, a few decades later, the English colonists Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe (1550-1620) landed here in 1584 on behalf of Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618) and found "vines climbing up the cedars" on coastal Roanoke Island. A year later, the governor Ralph Lane (1532-1603), who had been appointed there in the meantime, described "grapes...
