Well, I’ve seen them at Whole Foods, here in Napa, but I expect it’s quite unusual. Wine grapes and the grapes we eat aren’t the same species. You can find wine made of native American, Concord grapes, but it has a tiny market niche. The vast majority of us seem to prefer wine that’s made from the old-fashioned European varieties that have been around for centuries!
And, that also explains why the wines are so hard to pronounce! We name our wines for the grapes, most of the time, which means you end up speaking French, Italian, Spanish and German when it’s time to order!
The wine species is called Vitis vinifera and is thought to be native to the area south of the Black Sea, in what is now Georgia and Armenia. Eventually, it traveled west where the varieties mutated and new varieties were created by spontaneous crossing and intentional hybridization. More on wine grapes
