Today I would like to speak about a kind of fruit which became quite difficult to find in Torino, but was once very popular. I am speaking about "Uva fragola" which is the name by which a particular hybrid of American and European grape vine is called.
There is a story, maybe even history, behind this fruit. The grape which was grown in Europe for thousands of years, in many different varieties, to be used as table fruit, and to be made into raisins and wine, is "vitis vinifera". Some different species of grape vine were used, here and there, rarely, but "vinifera" (which means "wine bringer" in Latin) was the most common. Anyway, when European people went to America, they discovered a lot of new plants, and amongst them, a different species of vine, which was later called "vitis labrusca", and "American grape". The grape can be eaten, and has a sweeter and different taste. Wine can be made from it, but it is quite different from "real" wine, and has a particular sweetish / too fruity taste called "foxy" in English.
In late 19th century, a terrible thing happened. From America, a small parasite came to Europe, maybe in a ship carrying American grape vines (which was already used , sometimes, as roots to graft the European grape vine onto, since the production of wine rises in this way). This parasite proved very deadly to European vines. And this is a reason why there was a crisis in wine producing in that period. Many varieties of vine were lost, or almost disappeared. Scientists and agronomists scrambled to find a solution, and the easiest proved the one to graft every vine on American roots or on "hybrid" roots. Anyway, some people tried to make wine on labrusca grape, or to develop hybrids which were used to make wine. The taste of these wines was foxy, and, well, so different. But some people still enjoyed it, so, even after the wine industry had recovered on grafted vines, a small number of producers kept on making wine from those hybrid roots. In Italy, this wine was called "Fragolino" (cause the taste is like strawberry, and straberries are called "fragole") and the grape from which it is made are "uva fragola".
Later, for commercial reasons mostly, and because of a scare concerning supposedly "poisoned" wine, fragolino was outlawed in Europe (but it is still legal, and produced, in both America and Japan), except in a small region in Austria where it became traditional. So, uva fragola almost disappeared, except from some gardens, and from some few farms which still sell the grape (which is legal). Actually, you can still find a wine called "Fragolino" in every Italian supermarket, but that is made adding strawberry juice to "normal" wine.
So, one day in October, we found a small farmers' market in a square in Torino. And a stand was selling uva fragola, so we bought and ate it. Here is a picture:
