Caragnan Black Grape

If you have ever considered making your own wine to impress your foodie friends when they pop over with fresh baked sourdough bread and they are babbling on about the starter they got from their great aunt bessie who got it from her sister‘s mother, then this is the fruit for you!

APPEARANCE Rating:

Deep purple globes bunched very close together with a lovely bloom

AROMA Rating:

Not discernable

TEXTURE Rating:

Juicy and soft, only the slightest bit gelatinous but it has seeds

TASTE Rating:

Sweet and deeply complex with layers of spicy grape flavor

OVERALL Overall Rating:

This is clearly a grape that goes in to wine. In fact, I’ve been eating them and pretending to stumble around the house buzzed and delirious, then “passing out” right before I am supposed to do housework. It’s working like a charm – stop judging me. But back to the Carignan Black — it is complicated, juicy and wonderful. It has those pesky seeds, but the flavor here compared to regular grocery store grapes is worth the extra bit of work. A definite favorite.

FRUIT

Grape

VARIETY

Caragnan Black

PEAK

Fall

ORIGIN

French

GROWN

California

PURCHASED

Grocery Store

NOTES

“Carignan is a variety that has suffered greatly from image problems. As it has naturally high yields, it has long been used for mass produced wines and lower quality table wines.” More about French wine grapes.

RECIPES

Rosemary-Scented Flatbread with Black Grapes
Black Grape Smoothie

3 Comments

Gene on February 21, 2011 at 10:33 am

This is my Family’s favorite wine grape. I started drinking wine made from this grape as a little boy. My grandfather always used it.

Fruit Maven on February 22, 2011 at 7:24 pm

Wow Gene. That sounds amazing. I would love to have an experience like that.

Roger Werner on February 22, 2015 at 5:32 pm

You know something about grapes. I was going to say that in France, this grape is used to make grape juice. In Rhone wines this grape is almost always blended with about 10% Carignan. However, the true richness of the Carignan grape (that is what the Spanish call it) is achieved in the Priorat and Monsant Appellations in the Barcelona region of Spain (Denominacion de Origen Calificada). Grown in soil called Licorella, a soil that resembles shiny, black rock, with veins of brown-red, minerally earth; if you enjoy a full bodied dark red, this wine will knock your socks off and you can almost always buy it for under $25/bottle and it needs no bottle aging. The soil resembles shiny, black rock, with veins of brown-red, minerally earth. Almost all great red wine grapes are grown in soils that distress the fruit. The great Bordeauxs are grown in gravel for Pet’s sake! I grown Zinfandel grapes in my yard right next to concord grapes.