91Èȱ¬

East Anglia’s bright sunlight, little rainfall and low humidity means grapevines grow well here and, much more importantly, suffer less from moulds and rots as more humid areas. Even so, of the dozens of varieties I’ve grown, most are poor choices. It’s not that they won’t crop, most actually over-crop, and are sweet enough if thinned ruthlessly. No it’s the miserable way their glorious bunches rapidly rot given the slightest hint of damp. Even water vapour from a sagging gutter was sufficient to make one vine suffer mildew and it’s grapes to rot well before others.

I highly recommend Boskoop Glory, a tasty black, as this has proved by far and away the most reliable. With space to have several vines , a pinky red, is also worth trying as although running about average in miffy-ness it has an incredibly delicious Muscat flavour.

The Strawberry grape is contrary; highly productive, mildew resistant with rot free bunches the fruit has mediocre flavour- however my children love these purple grapes as the mouth feel is like eyeballs. The twins sort of helped with my ‘vendange’, despite eating and dropping more than made their buckets.

Ages ago I returned to a French farm over a dozen harvests and so it’s all a bit nostalgic- albeit on an absolutely minute scale. I still use my original , a small curved knife to sever the bunches. Of course instead of endless toiling for weeks my harvest takes but minutes. The same equipment used to crush and press my apples for juice was intended for grapes though these are much much quicker and proportionately also far more productive. The press can be cracked down faster, and further, but care needs taking not to go so far as to ‘make the pips squeak’ as then off flavours are extracted.

I rarely go on to make wine anymore; my grape juice is too good so it is promptly frozen in plastic bottles for drinking the rest of the year. When I made my juice into wine I ended up drinking both admittedly somewhat inferior wine and inferior (commercial) juice. Drinking my own juice and buying good organic wine has upped the quality of both many fold!

In a better year with more Siegerrebe grapes I would dry some as red raisins- delicious if somewhat seedy. (De-seeding is possible but messy and tedious). And I always dry some of my and indoor grapes. The first have unparalleled flavour and make the most exquisite muscatels. My white, or rather yellow, Chasselas D’or makes excellent sultanas but I have not yet settled on a better currant (Zante is reckoned the best but I’m searching for even more flavour).

You can also turn grape juice into tasty jelly or rather a range of jellies as each variety gives a different aroma. But I much prefer some juice as sorbet, mainly because I can pig an awful lot of this whilst still feeling relatively guilt free.

Have you had success with a particular grape variety? Perhaps you can offer suggestions for other parts of the UK? Add your comments below...

Bob Flowerdew is an organic gardener and panellist of 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4's Gardeners' Question Time