How to pick muscadines

3 min read

A different animal from a Concord, and everything you know about picking bunch grapes works against you here.

farms

regions

August to October

picked

When you can pick muscadines

Across every region on Pickeria. Darker months are peak somewhere; your own region is narrower, and the table below gives it.

What to look for

1
Pick one berry at a time, not in bunches. Muscadines ripen unevenly along the same cluster, so a bunch cut whole will be half green
2
A ripe one detaches with almost no effort and leaves a small dry scar. If you have to tug, it is not ready
3
Bronze and black are varieties, not ripeness stages. A scuppernong is a bronze muscadine and stays bronze, so judge by feel and smell rather than colour
4
They do not sweeten after picking, and unlike most fruit here they do not soften either. What you pick is what you get
5
The skin is thick and tannic on purpose. Most people bite the skin, eat the pulp and discard the rest, so do not judge a berry by chewing the whole thing

What people get wrong

Every one of these is common enough to be worth naming.

Cutting whole bunches the way you would a Concord, when muscadines ripen unevenly along the cluster and half of it will be green
Judging ripeness by colour, when bronze and black are varieties rather than stages
Chewing the whole berry and deciding you dislike them, when almost everyone eats the pulp and discards the thick skin
Expecting them to soften or sweeten at home, because they do neither

Varieties worth knowing

Farms post the variety at the gate. This is what the names mean.

Scuppernong

The bronze one, and the most famous. Sweet, musky, and effectively the state fruit of North Carolina.

Carlos and Doreen

Bronze varieties grown for wine and juice as much as for eating.

Noble and Ison

Black muscadines, deeper flavoured and better for juice and jelly.

Supreme

A very large black table variety, sometimes the size of a small plum, and the one to ask for if you are eating them fresh.

Once you are home

Most people pick more than they planned to.

Muscadine jelly is the standard use and the skins carry both the colour and most of the flavour
The hulls can be cooked separately and added back, which is the traditional southern method
They freeze whole and are eaten frozen in some households, skin and all
Muscadine wine is a genuine tradition rather than a novelty, and the fruit is well suited to it

The season

September and October, and a southern crop only. Muscadines need heat and cannot survive a northern winter, which is why the entire American u-pick range for them sits below roughly the Virginia line.

Best time to pick

September and October, and mid-morning once the dew has gone. Wet muscadines split at the scar.

How much to pick

Five pounds is a generous afternoon. They keep better than any other grape here, so there is less urgency about processing them.

Keeping them

Up to a week refrigerated in a single layer, unwashed. They handle better than any other grape because of that thick skin, which is why they survive a hot car when nothing else does.

With children

Good, and unusual in that the vines are on high trellises so there is shade underneath. Children generally enjoy the pop-the-pulp business once someone shows them.

Worth knowing

A muscadine is a different species from every other grape, Vitis rotundifolia rather than Vitis vinifera or labrusca, and it has forty chromosomes where the others have thirty-eight. It cannot be crossbred with them easily and it is naturally resistant to the phylloxera that destroyed European vineyards.

Where you can pick muscadines

8 farms across 2 regions, earliest season first. Every date came from the farm's own words.

Atlanta, GA4 farmsfrom $2.00/lb

Southern Belle Farm, The Blueberry Farm, HEMI Blueberry Farm and 1 more

August to October

Charlotte, NC4 farms

Lineberger's Maple Springs Farm, The Ivy Place Berry and Flower Farm, Cauble Creek Vineyard and 1 more

September to October

The one farm that publishes a price

Taken from the farm's own website, never from a directory. Most publish nothing at all, so these are worth knowing.

Bank's VineyardFayetteville$2.00/lb

Other guides

What to look for

Pick one berry at a time, not in bunches. Muscadines ripen unevenly along the same cluster, so a bunch cut whole will be half green

A ripe one detaches with almost no effort and leaves a small dry scar. If you have to tug, it is not ready

Bronze and black are varieties, not ripeness stages. A scuppernong is a bronze muscadine and stays bronze, so judge by feel and smell rather than colour

They do not sweeten after picking, and unlike most fruit here they do not soften either. What you pick is what you get

The skin is thick and tannic on purpose. Most people bite the skin, eat the pulp and discard the rest, so do not judge a berry by chewing the whole thing

What people get wrong

Every one of these is common enough to be worth naming.

Cutting whole bunches the way you would a Concord, when muscadines ripen unevenly along the cluster and half of it will be green

Judging ripeness by colour, when bronze and black are varieties rather than stages

Chewing the whole berry and deciding you dislike them, when almost everyone eats the pulp and discards the thick skin

Expecting them to soften or sweeten at home, because they do neither