Vine

Family

Vitaceae

Habit

Climber

Height

17.5 m

Spread

2 m

Growth

very fast

Lifespan

300 years

First yield

after 2 years

Full yield

after 4 years

Productive years

50 years

Yield per plant

up to 50 kg a year

Yield in cultivation

up to 12 t/ha

Energy yield

600 kcal per m² a year

Hardiness

zone 6–11

Shade tolerance

partial shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam

Soil moisture

dry – very moist

pH

5 – 7.5

Synonyms

Weintraube, Weintrauben

Planned in gardens

21×

Times apply to the northern hemisphere in a temperate climate and shift with altitude and cultivar.

Edible: Fruit - fresh or dried for winter. Dried fruits like raisins, sultanas, and currants are commonly available. Fresh fruits are sweet, juicy, and delicious. Their juice can be used as a sweetener and is often used in winemaking. The leaves can be cooked, adding a pleasant flavor to other foods. Young shoots can be eaten raw or cooked. The flower clusters are used as a vegetable. A cooking oil similar to sunflower oil is extracted from the seeds. It is suitable for mayonnaise and frying. The juice can be enjoyed raw as a drink, has a sweet taste, and should not be consumed in large quantities as it weakens the plant. The roasted seeds can serve as a coffee substitute. Cream of tartar, also known as potassium bitartrate, is obtained from the residues of pressed grapes and wine barrels and used in baking powder.

Medicinal: Grapes are a healthy and mildly laxative fruit that can support the body in gastrointestinal and liver conditions. Due to their nutrient content resembling that of blood plasma, grape fasting is recommended for detoxification. The fresh fruit has anti-inflammatory, cooling, diuretic, and strengthening properties. A diet mainly consisting of fruits can be particularly helpful in cases of liver atrophy or sluggish bile function. Dried grapes have soothing, cooling, mildly expectorant, laxative, and stomach-strengthening effects. They can also aid in relieving coughs. The leaves, especially red ones, possess anti-inflammatory and astringent properties. An infusion of the leaves is used to treat various conditions such as threatened miscarriage, internal and external bleeding, cholera, dropsy, diarrhea, and nausea. Red grape leaves are also beneficial for varicose veins, hemorrhoids, and capillary fragility. The leaves are harvested in early summer and used fresh or dried. The seeds have anti-inflammatory and astringent properties. The juice of young branches is diuretic and is used as a remedy for skin diseases. The tendrils are astringent, and a decoction is used to treat diarrhea. Grapes are also used in Bach flower remedies to address dominance and inflexibility.

Other uses: A yellow dye can be extracted from the fresh or dried leaves of the plant. The oil from the seeds is utilized as fuel and as an ingredient in soaps and paints. Tartar, obtained from the residues of pressed grapes, is used in the production of fluxes for soldering. The stems of very old vines can grow to a considerable size in warmer regions and provide highly durable wood.

Grapevine needs warmth and light: it wants a fully sunny, sheltered position with as much radiation as possible, which in Central Europe means south-facing slopes and the shelter of walls. The soil should be free-draining and not too wet — moderately dry to moderately moist, nutrient-rich, slightly acid to neutral substrates suit it best, while waterlogging damages the roots. Stony ground that warms quickly helps the fruit ripen. As a tendril climber the vine needs a solid framework from the outset, such as wires or a trellis. Yield depends on pruning: the vine fruits on one-year-old wood and is therefore cut back hard to a few buds every year, otherwise the stock ages and the bunches stay small. An open, thinned canopy matters just as much, so that bunches dry quickly after rain and fungal pressure drops.

In Germany one legal requirement overrides everything else: vines may only be planted grafted onto phylloxera-resistant rootstocks, and ungrafted plants are not permitted. The background is the grape phylloxera introduced from North America around 1860, which destroyed more than 70 percent of Europe's vineyards within a few decades; the remedy was to graft European varieties as scions onto American rootstock vines. A grafted vine therefore always consists of rootstock and scion. Vegetative propagation itself is straightforward: hardwood cuttings with several buds taken in winter root reliably, as do green cuttings in summer, and layering a cane also works. Sowing matters only in breeding, since seedlings do not come true to variety.

For flower-visiting insects the grapevine is of little value: its inconspicuous flowers are wind-pollinated and largely self-fertile, yield no usable pollen and are visited by honey bees only occasionally for nectar; bumblebees and solitary bees stay away almost entirely, and insect pollination is not required for the bunches to set. The vine contributes in other ways: ripening grapes are much sought after by blackbirds, starlings, thrushes and wasps, and older stocks offer hiding places for spiders, beetles and earwigs in their fissured, flaking bark and dense tangle of tendrils — trained against a house wall, nesting opportunities for small birds as well.

Special characteristics: sun and heat-loving, best planted against a south-west wall; offered grapevines are mostly hybrids with V. labrusca, V. riparia, etc.; a 400-year-old grapevine still yields 35-55kg of grapes annually; Varietal breeding determines use for fruit, raisins, or wine; =+ high-yielding 'Blue American'; Pruning +in winter.

Mediterranean, Central Europe to Asia Minor. The range of the grapevine covers the Mediterranean and extends through central France, south-western Switzerland, the Upper Rhine plain and the valleys of the Danube and Neckar to southern Russia and Asia Minor. The wild form grows scattered there in floodplain woodland of the lowlands and hill country, climbing through trees as a liana; in Central Europe it has become very rare. The cultivated form, by contrast, is now grown throughout the warmer temperate zones of the world and in Europe follows the wine-growing climate along the major river valleys. In Germany the Rhine, Mosel, Main and Neckar mark the northernmost continuous growing regions.

The wild form of the grapevine (subsp. sylvestris) is a liana of floodplain woodland: it grows scattered through river floodplains in lowland and hill country, climbing soft-wooded trees into their crowns and rooting in mostly dry to moderately moist, nutrient-rich alluvial soils. In Central Europe this ties it to warm river valleys — the Upper Rhine, the Danube, the Neckar — where it has declined severely. By Landolt's indicator values it is a light-demanding plant of warm, suboceanic positions on slightly acid to neutral ground. The cultivated form occupies an entirely different habitat: sunny, heat-storing slopes where steepness, stony soil and southern aspect secure ripening.