More on Muscat Grapes

One of the joys of travelling is trying new foods.
 Even travelling to the next high street or the centre of your home city takes you to new grocery shops which sell locally grown or imported and exotic fruit.

Refrigerate or Ripen

The muscat grapes I bought were Muscat Beauty Seedless from Chile. They were sold to me by Waitrose supermarket. Checking the label I see that they tell you to wash before use and refrigerate after purchase. That depends if they are ripe enough already. Some fruits such as kiwis we bought were not ripe so we left them out in the kitchen to ripen.

Seedless Grapes

One of the joys of life is seedless grapes. If selective breeding in the greenhouse produces seedless grapes, I'm all for it. Less to dispose of when travelling. So how do seedless grapes breed? They are regenerated by grafting. If you plant a chardonnay seed you don't get a Chardonnay vine. Like children, they all come about different. But if you graft, or move the branches to take root, like a banyan tree, you get exactly the same fruit.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.