Do you find yourself involuntarily salivating for Twin Snakes or Starmix? Are you standing tippy-toe for a handful of Sour Patch Watermelons? Is there a nonstop conveyer belt of tart treats going down your gullet? There is another way. I want to open a muscadine clinic for all the Haribo loyalists in the world. Nature's gummy candy could fill the void as summer turns to fall.
The muscadine is a grape, but not the kind that populates fruit salads and Ziploc baggies. Those are mushy, easily yielding to the teeth, tossed into the mouth and eaten whole. Instead, the muscadine is an imposing orb that forces the eater to meditate upon its structure. Its skin might be a dull green with a purplish blush, or a wine-dark purple with a pinkish blush; it might have a dusty metallic sheen. It might be rough and speckled on the surface, a little leathery, and strangely taut. If that doesn't sound like a pleasant bite of fruit, that's fine—you won't actually be eating that part. Think of the muscadine as an individually packaged treat.
To eat the muscadine, put it to your mouth, bite an opening into the skin, and give it a gentle squeeze between forefinger and thumb. The flesh will pop out fully intact, with enthusiasm, as if shedding an uncomfortable costume. I cannot overstate how gummy-like those innards are. They are translucent and hold their shape, a satisfyingly dense matrix of goo that can withstand some chewing. If Flubber were edible, these might be the tasting notes.
The muscadine exudes a juice that is tangy and floral, rounding out with a good spoonful of sugar and an occasional whiff of vinous funk. This is an oddly circular thought, but this taste of muscadine seems like the target that artificial grape flavoring was aiming at, a flavor that scarcely resembles the one-note, sugar-bomb table grapes we find today. This is what they took away from us!
One beloved variety of muscadine is the scuppernong, a word I like to read and say, which feels like a spiritually accurate word for a snack this silly. It's strange to realize that a treat this jelly-like and goofy was lurking inside that intimidating carapace all along.
Aside from the muscadine's tough exterior, there are some big seeds inside that have to be sorted out, but they separate easily from the flesh. This makes the muscadine more complicated to eat than a standard grape, but it will appeal to process-oriented snackers who like to shell sunflower seeds. It gives the idle teeth and mind something to fixate on. With snacks like these, l feel like my rate of consumption goes down, but my overall capacity to consume expands indefinitely, because all my attention is honed to the pinpoints of my canines. Poke the skin, plop out the flesh, pick out the seeds. Poke, plop, pick, poke, plop, pick. I've mowed down boxes of these in a silent, happy stupor.
Muscadines are native to and commonly associated with the South. People in Georgia are used to eating them in the wild, throwing them into pies and wines, but they are now grown from Florida to Delaware. In the New York metropolitan area, I have to settle for buying them at the grocery store instead of plucking them off the vine. On my last trip, the store's usual muscadine spot was empty, and though the boring grapes nearby tried to lure me in, I rejected their call. My fridge still had one box left, which I have meted out carefully. Now there is exactly one muscadine remaining.
Around these parts we take seasonal fruit seriously, and I'm already mourning its absence from my snack rotation. The sun might still be warming my arms as I type this, but it is October, and next summer's crop feels painfully far away. In the meantime, I might have to settle for a bag of gummies.
