Are Muscats Grapes?

Raise your hand if you only deal with two types of grapes and colors. For me that green or red seedless grapes. Growing up, we rarely got seedless grapes. Size varied from jumbo to tiny. As an adult/mother, I usually get seedless for my family. I hated munching on regular grapes because the seeds are such a flavor contrast from the fruit itself. Like an unexpected bitter taste interrupting the party. Also, seedless tend to be smaller and juicer. I didn’t realize there’s more to grapes than meets the eye. In the U.S. grapes aren’t labeled by their type like apples. Turns out there are two types of seedless green grapes. Those are Sultana and Himrod. So why do I care?

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Over the years,  I’ve been watching Japanese homestyle cooking vlogs. Some of them include daily life tasks, like grocery shopping. When they’re describing what their getting I get confused. For example,  prawn looks like shrimp and muscat looks like grapes. Since I’m locked in on my favorite vlogs, this small detail kept eating away at me. That’s how we got here.  To nourish my own curiosity,  I had to look into this.

So What Is A Muscat

Well, its a grape, just not a specific type of grape. It’s kinda like there’s more than one type of apple, but its still called the apple section.  Keeping that in mind, by definition, muscat and grape are interchangeable. If it helps, the word grape is generic; whereas muscat encompasses over 200 species. It turns out the things we simplify are in fact diverse.

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Honestly, I think muscats sold in Japan look tastier than the grapes sold in the U.S. that probably stems from how their picked and raised throughout the year.  Meaning, fruits tricked to grow year-round won’t taste as good out of season. I’m sure there agricultural reasons why Muscats appear to be superior to the breed farmed/imported to the west.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this little trip into the things that nag at me. Mundane sure, I won’t deny that. Still, learning something new is good for the mind. Who knows,  this might help you on a game show someday. As always, thank you for spending sometime with me. Hope to see you back for Tuesday’s with Trisha!