Kitchen Garden Forum

One of the family has put a grape vine on his Christmas wish list. This would be to grown on a pergola in Berkshire, so a reasonably warm part of the country. I'm guessing this is for dessert use rather than wine making. The varieties that sound possible include Lakemont, Phoenix and Bianca. Does anybody have experience of these varieties, or can anyone suggest any better ones?

No I haven't any experience of these all varieties. I will prefer to you cultivars garpe wine which is much better than other varieties. Its test very nice than other wine's test.

williamraed wrote:I will prefer to you cultivars garpe wine which is much better than other varieties.

I haven't come across the Garpe variety. Did you mean this which I found?

We're in Bucks so quite close and have grown a Reisling grape vine for a number of years very successfully. It can be used for winemaking, or the grapes eaten as dessert grapes when ripe. But of course the grapes are fairly small (we don't bother to thin the bunches out so the individual grapes might be bigger if we did) and they do have seeds in them. But certainly in a good year with plenty of sunshine, they are very sweet. If they want to experiment with drying the grapes and turning them into dried fruit instead of winemaking, they would need a seedless variety and I'm afraid I can't point you in any specific direction for these.

There was an informative article in the October KG magazine about growing grapes with recommended varieties.

I've found that seedless ones are less robust than ones with seeds so are better grown in the greenhouse.

I've had good crops from a Madeleine Angevine outdoors here in Yorkshire the first two years from planting, but this year was so cold they flowered so late that the fruits didn't have long enough to grow and ripen. I've made a very enjoyable wine last year and used it as a dessert grape. I'm sure there are lots of outstanding varieties available, but most would do better under cover to lengthen the growing season.

In the balmy south you should have more luck, but the British vineyards do seem to favour the Madeleine and Seyval Blanc.