Flash in the Pan

Two bottles of muscadine grape juice from Nature's Pearl arrived in the middle of an onslaught of extra teenagers staying over. Luckily I got some tasting in before others had decimated the contents. You find them in the southeastern US and are, at least according to the PR materials, the only grapes that grow naturally in the climate. They must be hearty compared to regular grapes, which can fall prey to disease, and the hotter climates of these areas become virtual breeding grounds for microbes.

The materials make a number of claims as to what muscadines contain compared to some other fruits:

• 40 times the resveratrol or regular grapes


• up to 10 times the antioxidants of blueberries, cranberries and goji berries (though for all I know, regular grapes do as well)


• anti-inflammatory and antihistamine properties


• healthy compounds usually not found in grapes, but in foods like apples and onions (quercetin, ellagic acid)

How much of this is real and what are the effects? I don't know and have no idea. But the juice is very sweet while still retaining the fruit taste you could lose with added sugar. As my wife said, "Yum." She preferred the red, as did I, but there was a little bitter aftertaste in the white that I still found pleasing, if a bit more astringent.

Unfortunately, this is another case where purchase is expensive - because you have to buy a case at a time. A dozen bottles run $108 and shipping from North Carolina to Massachusetts would have run $20, for a total of almost $11 a bottle. Clearly this is not a casual drink for the kids. Also, the web site says that supplies are limited. Of course, a billion bottles would still be limited, but if you're interested, you might go to the site's contact page and see if there is any problem for getting the quantity you wanted. You might also point the site out to a local store and see if it would bring in some bottles for you.

Labels: grape, juice, muscadine, Nature's Pearl, opinion, review