Doing the Charleston, Part One: Harry Potter and the Scuppernong

There we were, in town for a four night run at the Piccolo Spoleto festival, which means we had four days relatively free in what has rapidly become our favorite touring destination: the Lowcountry. As we sloshed into the tasting room of a local vineyard, seeking refuge from tropical depression Barry, a teacup Yorkie ran up to great us. His name? Harry Potter.

He was followed by a charming older woman, who owned the winery along with her husband. I mean, she and her husband owned the winery together. She gave us the low down on Harry Potter: “ He was kind of a girly boy when we got him, with ribbons in his hair, but now he runs around with sticks.”

Seth, a wry smile forming amidst his stubble, asked: “Do you spell it H-A-I-R-Y?”

“No, H-A-R-R-Y” she responded, correcting what she must have assumed was Yankee ineptitude.

Her husband then appeared and instantly began describing the history of the Muscadine grape that they so proudly grow. Apparently Muscadine viniculture is an old Southern tradition, popular since long before what our informer referred to as “The War of Northern Aggression,” or what we in the North think of as “The End of Slavery.”

Given that comment, we were curious to see how our hosts would interact with the black family who came in after us. As far as we could tell, they were treated with exactly the same level of Southern hospitality, with one exception. The owner recommended that we pair their sweet, white wine with Thai food. We overheard him recommend that the family try it with fried chicken.

That said, we loved the wine. It was much more interesting and far less expensive than many of its counterparts above the Mason Dixon line. In fact, I’ll go so far as to recommend that phrase as the new slogan of the South: More Interesting, Less Expensive.

Some of the wines were on the dry side – always an accomplishment for small vineyards with unusual varieties of grapes, as they’re often tempted to compensate for lack of complexity with a higher percentage of residual sugars. We asked what accounted for the difference between sweet and dry wines from the same grape, imaging that it must have something to do with the type of oak their barrels were made from, or the ratio of skins to juice in the final pressing. “Dixie crystals!” they answered, beaming.

When they want to go for a sweeter wine, they add sugar. It was as though someone had put a toddler in control of the final product. Surprisingly, you could “taste the grape” much more in a bottle that had 1/8 teaspoon of added sugar. However, the same goes for “tasting the grain” in oatmeal as compared to, say, Cocoa Puffs.

Our hosts took every opportunity to inform us of the advantages of the Muscadine grape over all other varieties, making it an obvious metaphor for the superiority of the South. Lesser known and full of seeds, the Muscadine somehow beat out all those Northern grapes in every possible test. It was even naturally resistant to pests and required no spraying.

“So it’s organic?” asked Seth, full of New England liberalism.
“No, not with all the herbicide I have to spray,” said the proprietor.

But there was more. Muscadines, and their cousin, the Scuppernong (!?) also contain mythic proportions of every nutritionally beneficial chemical that occurs in nature, trumping grapes with wimpy names like “pinot.” Apparently, drinking Muscadine wine even coats your platelets so thoroughly that your arteries will never clot. To bad it couldn’t have helped them win that pesky disagreement over states’ rights.

-Aaron Kagan tours the US with the Late Night Players sketch comedy group, and is a burgeoning scuppernong afficianado.