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Humans have extensively shaped animals and plants through domestication. Although wine and table grapes have been important culturally for thousands of years, their origin has been difficult to pinpoint because of uneven sampling of modern cultivars. In new research, geneticists from Yunnan Agricultural University and elsewhere analyzed genetic data from 3,525 cultivated and wild grape varieties from around the world.

In the summer of 1495, King Hans of Denmark and Norway anchored his warship off the southern coast of Sweden. While Hans was on land, his vessel—known as Gribshunden or Griffen—mysteriously caught fire and sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.Hans was on his way to Kalmar, where he hoped to be elected king of Sweden and reunite the broader Nordic region under a single ruler. As such, Hans brought many opulent status symbols, including luxurious foods and spices, to help persuade the Swedish leadership to agree to his plan.Remarkably, many of those foods and spices have survived underwater...

Though there are many products where grape flavor can be welcome, such as juices, sodas, popsicles, and (of course) the actual fruit, the one place you’ll rarely find a grape is in your ice cream. Many conspiracy theories have been floating around as to why the lowly grape has yet to make its way to the creamery, but you might find that the real reason is the simplest of all. Let’s review. The main idea running rampant around the Internet blames the absence of grape ice cream on the Food and Drug Administration, which banned the flavor because of pet-related...

Vineyards in Northern California began planting thousands of acres of new vines in 2016, and with more efficient harvesting methods, it has led to more bountiful harvests of grapes. Having more grapes to make wine sounds good, but if there’s not enough demand to support increased production, the surplus grapes go to waste. Jeff Bitter, president of Allied Grape Growers, told CNN that it’s possible for surplus grapes to make it to the secondary market, where they’re used for brandy or as grape concentrate. But that market doesn’t typically provide sustainable returns for growers. “The main cause of oversupply today...

Visitors to a hot spring in central Japan will soon be able to snack on $460 grapes, or rather, grape. That's after the manager of a chain of hot spring hotels in Ishikawa Prefecture, on the northern coast of the main Honshu island, became the winning bidder for a bunch of Ruby Roman grapes at an auction in Kanazawa on Tuesday. Takashi Hosokawa will pay 1.2 million yen, or around $11,000, for the 24 plump, deep red grapes prized for their juiciness, high sugar content and low acidity. It's the most expensive bunch since the breed came to market 12...

Studies of ancient preserved plant remains from a medieval archaeological site in the Pamir Mountains of Uzbekistan have shown that fruits, such as apples, peaches, apricots, and melons, were cultivated in the foothills of Inner Asia. The archaeobotanical study, conducted by Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, is among the first systematic analyses of medieval agricultural crops in the heart of the ancient Silk Road. Spengler identified a rich assemblage of fruit and nut crops, showing that many of the crops we are all familiar with today were cultivated along the ancient trade...

Monte Kronio rises 1,300 feet above the geothermally active landscape of southwestern Sicily. Hidden in its bowels is a labyrinthine system of caves, filled with hot sulfuric vapors. At lower levels, these caves average 99 degrees Fahrenheit and 100 percent humidity. Human sweat cannot evaporate and heat stroke can result in less than 20 minutes of exposure to these underground conditions. Nonetheless, people have been visiting the caves of Monte Kronio since as far back as 8,000 years ago. They’ve left behind vessels from the Copper Age (early sixth to early third millennium B.C.) as well as various sizes of...

A lost Viking settlement known as "Hóp," which has been mentioned in sagas passed down over hundreds of years, is said to have supported wild grapes, abundant salmon and inhabitants who made canoes out of animal hides. Now, a prominent archaeologist says the settlement likely resides in northeastern New Brunswick. If Hóp is found it would be the second Viking settlement to be discovered in North America. The other is at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland. ...using the description of the settlement from sagas of Viking voyages, along with archaeological work carried out at L'Anse aux...

More than 4,000 years ago builders carved out the entire surface of a naturally pyramid-shaped promontory on the Greek island of Keros. They shaped it into terraces covered with 1,000 tonnes of specially imported gleaming white stone to give it the appearance of a giant stepped pyramid rising from the Aegean: the most imposing manmade structure in all the Cyclades archipelago... Archaeologists from three different countries involved in an ongoing excavation have found evidence of a complex of drainage tunnels -- constructed 1,000 years before the famous indoor plumbing of the Minoan palace of Knossos on Crete -- and traces...

HALIFAX—The skies have been brilliant blue in Nova Scotia wine country this October, the vines heavy with grapes, and winemakers such as Sean Sears are seeing crops they could only vaguely hope for in the past. Amid the havoc wrought elsewhere by global warming, Annapolis Valley vineyards have flourished as temperatures have moderated. “If this trend continues we’ll be sitting in one of the great wine regions,” Sears says in an interview. Sears says his Petite Riviere vineyard has already clipped fruit with sucrose counts higher than anything his plants have produced in his memory, while the skin, seeds and...

As temperatures plunged from 94 degrees into the 60s on a recent August evening, Lodi grower Brad Goehring dispatched his crew of Mexican workers into a field to pick Pinot Gris. The grapes were finally sweet enough, and the 2017 wine harvest had begun. Despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to step up deportations of undocumented immigrants, there’s little evidence of field workers being rounded up in California this year. “We haven’t heard of a single ICE raid in California fields,” said Goehring. An estimated 70 percent of California’s roughly 600,000 farm workers are undocumented, according to United Farm Workers Vice...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D.-N.Y.) announced yesterday that the federal government will spend up to $18,000,000 to buy Concord grape juice in an effort to increase the price that New York farmers can get for their grapes. In a letter to Agricultural Secretary Sonny Perdue urging him to have the government buy the grape juice, Sen. Schumer noted that there are “more than 280 growers with over 9,700 acres” of Concord grape vineyards in New York State. “I write to encourage the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agriculture Marketing Service (AMS) to utilize...

“This isn’t so much a harvest, as a hunt for grapes,” said French winemaker Jean-Jacques Robert, with a rueful laugh as he unloaded grapes still warm from his vineyards around Fuisse in Burgundy. “It’s a catastrophe, the worst harvest for 30 or 40 years,” said the normally cheery 64-year-old owner of Domaine Robert-Denogent. The organic winemaker lost between two-thirds and three-quarters of his harvest in one hailstorm in April. He is not alone. For thousands of French winemakers, 2016 will go down as an annus horribilis, with vines destroyed by frost, heavy rain, hailstones “as big as ping pong balls”,...

It’s weird to think about, but a lot of the things we take for granted are almost shockingly recent inventions. The can opener didn’t exist until 1870—nearly a full century after canned food was first produced (people ate so much canned food that year, you guys). Doors have been around forever, but doorknobs weren’t invented until 1878 (and people were finally able to leave their houses). And grape juice?

I've started a vineyard, 7 vines in 42 feet of space. All seedless and I'm in NC. I'm trying to decide what wire and post configuration to use. So far I have 3 eight feet posts that are 2 feet deep. Should I go with T on top of each or just 2 wires at 5.5 feet ant a second wire about 18 inches beneath it. Suggestions?

Pro-amnesty and mass migration advocate Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) 86% tried to argue that Florida Senator Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) 79% is more conservative than Alabama Senator Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) 80% . As South Carolina’s Post and Courier Deanna Pan reports via twitter: “Gowdy notes that Rubio has higher Heritage ratings than Jeff Sessions and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) 79% . ‘There is no one more conservative than Marco Rubio.'” Jeff Sessions has been the fiercest opponent of Sen. Rubio’s open borders trade and immigration agenda. By contrast, in 2013— at a time when illegal minors were continuing to...

Chemical terror plot foiled in London Fri November 21, 2003 11:43 PM ET LONDON (Reuters) - An attempt by a London-based terror group to buy half a tonne of toxic chemicals was foiled after the supplier became suspicious and alerted police, the Financial Times has reported.It said the group had attempted to buy 500 kgs (1,102 lb) of the toxin saponin from Amersham Biosciences late last year but the sale was refused after staff became concerned about the size of the order. A spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police told Reuters on Saturday that police were "not prepared to discuss the...

TROY, Mich., - A Michigan woman who bought grapes from a Walmart store said she discovered a venomous black widow spider in the package. Ariel Jackson, 25, said she bought the perforated package of grapes from a Walmart Supercenter in Troy and she discovered the spider when she started washing the fruit. "She was screaming about a huge spider, and everyone was like, 'Calm down, it's probably nothing,'" Jackson's boyfriend, Michal Frank, 26, told ABC News. "But we took a closer look and lo and behold, it's a black widow. It had the red hourglass-shaped spot on its belly." Jackson...

If global temperatures continue to rise, the taste of your favourite wine could either drastically change, or the drink could be off the menu completely. A wine expert has warned that fine wines in particular, such as Pinot Noir, are having their flavour significantly altered due to climate change. And, as a result, vineyard owners are ditching these grape varieties in favour of those that are better equipped to handle the increases in global temperature.

JOHANNESBURG – Baboons, it seems, prefer pinot noir. They also like a nice chardonnay. Largely undeterred by electric fences, hundreds of wild baboons in South Africa's prized wine country are finding the vineyards of ripe, succulent grapes to be an "absolute bonanza," said Justin O'Riain of the University of Cape Town. Winemakers have resorted to using noisemakers and rubber snakes to try to drive the baboons off during harvest season. "The poor baboons are driven to distraction," said O'Riain, who works in the university's Baboon Research Unit. "As far as baboons are concerned, the combination of starch and sugar is...