A grid of two-lane roads serve both as interstate highway and local tractor path between the hot, steamy, relatively poor states of the American South. There are few interstate highways in the South, and a view of the local environs is mostly concealed by tall pines and sycamores – purposefully left in thick bunches alongside the roads either to protect the roadway users from unsightly residences or to protect residents from intrusive “fur’ners”. So the South is best seen from those local two-lane roads, which are sometimes the only choice of conduit between two areas of sizable population.
Imagine yourself driving along those back-woods roads of the Deep South. The sun is punishing the land – the only quenching relief is the shallow, sandy creeks that feed the swamps and lakes. Every now and then a critter crosses the road in front of you, and sometimes an unrecognizable, lifeless creature lays in a mess on the side of the road. Every half hour, you pass through a cross-roads with some old, crumbling buildings. Every hour, you venture into a little town with a few nice houses built from old money and a dilapidated main street with over half of the buildings unoccupied. Signs of economic tragedy are everywhere – a mossy trailer-park, a sun-bleached “for sale” sign, a cemetery with grass growing to the top of the tombstones, a Wal-Mart parking lot full of old, rusty trucks covered with Confederate flags, signs along the roadside telling you to pray to God for better times (or otherwise, go to hell).
Sometimes, these roads seem desolate and hopeless. But every few hours of wandering, you come across a little jewel. Sometimes there is a town that has retained its splendor of a century-and-a-half ago, and then there are a few cities restoring their old downtowns, and then there are the rolling fields of cotton and peanuts and the orchards of peaches and pecans. There is hope in this place. And there is a little secret that only the locals know about – Muscadine wine.
You laugh? How dare you!
I am as serious as the Frenchmen that first tried to ferment this New World grape in Spanish Florida five-hundred years ago. It is a grape unlike anything that Europeans had ever seen - its vines withstood the rot and fungus that infected all of the European varieties that the French and Spanish first tried to cultivate.
But though it was first cultivated by Europeans, this wine’s personality is clearly Southern. Its drawl is sweet and soft. It makes one think of easy times and cool nights watching the moon’s reflection on smooth water. Sounds of Savanna’s riverside quay, Charleston’s market, Mobile’s port, North Carolina’s tobacco fields and Birmingham’s iron mines echo through the mind with one sip of this sweet nectar. Its rich, sweet smell calls on one to remember Southern food – sweet tea, sweet potatoes, collard greens, fried okra, fried chicken, pulled pork, and corn bread, while also presenting a hint of that sweet, musky smell of an old, cold French cellar where distilled Cognac is aging in oaken barrels.
It is an adventure in itself to find one of the few little wineries that make Muscadine wine. As far as I know, there are currently eight in Alabama (mostly in the hill-country of the northern part), one in the southern, least-populated part of Georgia, a few in the northern part of Florida, and quite a lot in the Yadkin Valley area of North Carolina and Virginia. If you happen to find yourself wandering through one of these areas, I highly recommend capturing the essence and hope of the South with a glass of cold blush or white Muscadine wine.
Photo: Carlos, white Muscadine, from Chautauqua Vineyards, Florida
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