GRAPES

16th December 2023

Photo Credit: Oersin (Getty Images), CANVA

What win I if I gain the thing I seek?

A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.

Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week

Or sells eternity to get a toy?

For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?

Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,

Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?

LUCRECE: Rape of Lucrece, Line 211

Grapes (Vitus vinifera)

Grapes make several appearances in their fresh form and in the several types of wines mentioned in the texts: Sack, Canary, Rhenish etc, and also as raisins.

The Worshipful Company of Vintners were important players in the importation of wine to England at the time. The frequent mentions of wine and wine based alcohols implies widespread knowledge if not widespread access to wine.

John Parkinson, Paradise in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (1629), Chapter 10 has a long discussion on the loss of vineyards and cultivation skill sin England: “I have read that many monasteries in this kingdom having vineyards, had as much wine made therefrom, as sufficed their convents year by year: but long since they have been destroyed, and the knowledge how to order a vineyard is also utterly perished with them. For although divers, both Nobles and Gentlemen, have in these later times endeavoured to plant and make Vineyard, and to that purpose have caused French men, being skillful in keeping and dressing vines, to be brought over to perform it, yet either their skill failed them, or their vines were not good, or (the most likely) the soil was not fitting, for they could never make any wine that was worth the drinking, being so small and heartless, that they soon gave over their practice.”

Grapes are now grown in many parts of the world, and despite Parkinson’s disdain for English wine making, England is becoming a sought after area for vines as a result of climate change.

More Information

Kew Plants of the World Online: Grapes

Sarah Marsh, 2020, Guardian: English Vineyards & Global Warming

Parkinson, 1629 Paradisi in Sole, Paradisus terrestris (accessed via Archive.org)