The Grape That Loves a Southern Summer
Late summer in the Panhandle has a flavor, and for a lot of us it tastes like muscadines. If you grew up here, one bite can send you straight back to a hot afternoon spent picking grapes off a backyard vine, the good ones still warm from the sun. Muscadine season runs from late July into October, which means we have the whole season ahead of us.
Muscadines (Vitis rotundifolia) are native to the southeastern US, ranging from Florida up to Delaware and west into Texas and Oklahoma. Unlike the familiar bunch grapes at the grocery store, they grow in loose clusters and carry a bold sweetness all their own. Their thick skins slip off easily, and the flesh inside is soft, juicy, and just a tad tart.
Muscadines are also good for you. Their skins and seeds are especially rich in polyphenols like ellagic acid and resveratrol, antioxidants that have drawn plenty of research interest. You can eat them fresh by the handful, cook them down into jams and preserves, bake them into pies, or press them for juice. And of course, ferment them into wine – sweet, a little musky, and unmistakably Southern.
Part of what makes muscadines such a good fit for our yards is that they’re built for our climate. Long, humid summers and sandy, well-drained soils are exactly what they want, and their thick skins and natural antifungal compounds make them far more disease- and pest-resistant than European grapes, which need regular fungicide sprays to get through our humid summers – and which Pierce’s disease will eventually kill anyway. That said, muscadines aren’t invincible. Angular leaf spot, fruit rots, grapevine borers, hungry birds, raccoons, and deer can all take a toll. But as backyard fruit goes, they’re about as low-maintenance as it gets.
If you’re thinking about planting a vine, it’s important to know that not all muscadines pollinate themselves. Some cultivars are female and need a self-fertile variety planted nearby to set fruit. Many are self-fertile and will produce on their own – but plant a female type by itself and you’ll get flowers and no grapes. When in doubt, ask where you buy your plants, or simply choose a self-fertile cultivar to keep things easy. For more information, check out the UF/IFAS EDIS publication The Muscadine Grape.
You may hear the bronze-skinned types called scuppernongs. That name comes from the Scuppernong River in North Carolina, where the first named muscadine variety was found. These days most people use “scuppernong” loosely for any bronze muscadine.
Our arbor in the Demonstration Garden at the UF/IFAS Leon County Extension Office is a good example of why it pays to plant a mix. We grow four cultivars there: ‘Carlos’ and ‘Alachua’ are old reliables, bronze and black respectively, both self-fertile and both excellent for juice, jelly, and wine. The other two are newer. ‘Delicious’ is a 2009 UF release that lives up to its name, with large black berries and skin thin enough to eat. It also ripens two to three weeks ahead of most muscadines, which gets our season started early. The fourth is ‘Oh My!’, released in 2022, and it isn’t quite a muscadine – it’s a cross between a muscadine and a bunch grape, bred to be seedless. The berries are full-sized and bronze with tender skins, which makes them easy eating out of hand, though seedless types aren’t ideal for winemaking since the seeds are what supply tannins. It’s still new enough that there isn’t much independent data on how it performs in North Florida, so our arbor is partly a way of finding out. Between the four, we should have fruit across most of the season as the vines mature.
New cultivars like these come out of long-running breeding programs, and the Panhandle is home to one of them. The Florida A&M University (FAMU) Center for Viticulture and Small Fruit Research in Tallahassee works to improve grape and small-fruit cultivars suited to Florida’s climate, breeding for disease resistance, better fruit quality, higher yields, and more sustainable growing practices.
You can see that work up close at the annual FAMU Grape Harvest Festival, set for Saturday, August 22, 2026, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Center, 6361 Mahan Drive. There will be guided vineyard tours and demonstrations, wine and grape tastings, U-pick grape activities, family games, local vendors, and the crowd-favorite grape-stomping competition. Admission is $10, with discounts for students and seniors. For more details, call (850) 599-3996.
However you enjoy them, now’s the time to eat your fill. And if you find a cultivar you love, make a note – winter is planting season, and an arbor of your own is closer than you think.
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