Ten Amazing Facts About Grapes You Won’t Believe Are Real

If you enjoy them crushed and turned into wine or just snacking on a bunch of them from the supermarket, grapes are not only tasty, they are also interesting! I have searched the web looking for ten of the most interesting facts about grapes I could find and after reading this I hope that like me you have a new found respect for this woody vine fruit…

FACT 1: Grapes Come in Many Colours!

In fact, they almost come in every colour under the rainbow! Including ped, black, white, pink, purple, yellow and of course good old green. You can even get rainbow coloured grapes, but these are not naturally grown.

FACT 2: Grapes Were First Used as Wine 8,000 Years Ago!

The earliest archaeological evidence for people turning grapes into wine was found in Georgia and this is the first known use of wine-making in human culture.

Fact 3: 71% of all grapes grown are turned into wine

It is thought that grape growing takes up as much as, 75,866 square kilometres of the world. So what about the other 29% you might ask? Apparently, 27% is used as fresh fruit and the last 2% is turned into dried fruit.

FACT 4: Both Grapes and Raisins Are Bad for Dogs!

Do you give your dog the odd grape from the bunch? If you do you might want to stop because grapes can cause large potential health threats including acute renal failure, kidney failure and even problems with the anuria causing your dog to stop producing urine.

FACT 5: The Man Who Build the Ark Was a Wine Grower

Grapes get their first mention in the bible when it starts talking about Noah and the ark building. He apparently had a whole farm and I can only presume took a lot of them on the ark with him!

FACT 6: Grapes Are Not Really Fruits!

They are botanically classed as a berry and even their name means berry in old English. But of course, we often classify them as one of our 5 a day fruits. And no, wine can not be used as one of those 5.

FACT 7: It is Thought There Are Over 8,000 Different Varieties of Grapes!

There are of course different uses of grapes, so there are varieties of wine grapes and table grapes. Interestingly almost 90% of the world’s varieties are grown here in Europe.

FACT 8: Grapes Contain Yeast!

Yeast, of course, is a single-celled fungus much like mushrooms and the skin of a grape can contain quite a lot of it, hence the reason grapes make good wine! Apparently the riper the grape is, the more yeast the skin contains!

FACT 9: It Takes Over 100 Grapes to Make a Bottle of Wine

For each 750ml bottle of wine you consume at least 100 grapes have gone into making that which in weight is about 90 pound (or 41 KG).

FACT 10: the Largest Bunch of Grapes Ever Grown Weighed 10.12 Kg!

While it might be hard to imagine a bunch of grapes weighing 10.12 kg (22.31 lbs) it is about 5 times what a normal bunch of grapes weigh. It was grown in Spain by Sebastián Gómez Falcón in August 2018.

Do you know of any other facts about grapes? If you do why not share them in the comments below and let your knowledge of them be known to the world.