brianb said:
It's sweet? I've had wine grapes and they were not my cup of tea - too bitter.
There are two principal species of grape:
Vitis viniferis and
Vitis labrusca. Virtually all wines (and all fine wines) are made of
V. viniferis, and the cultivars that make wine are
generally (but not always) unsuitable for eating, because they are quite acidic. It's a good quality for winemaking, but not necessarily for fresh fruit salad! Sometimes you can find muscat grapes in the stores, and they're pretty good. (Incidentally, muscat is the only wine with a definite grape flavour!)
Concord grapes are a cultivar of
V. labrusca, which is native to North America. They're used for table grapes, jams and jellies, grape juice, and so forth because they're very sweet, and not as acidic. Hence they tend to make very sweet wines that winetasters would tend to call "flabby," meaning that the sweetness is not balanced by acidity. Wines made with
V. labrusca also tend to have an off-flavour they call "foxy." There are some
labrusca and hybrid varietals that are pretty good, but relatively few.
