Concord grapes originated in Concord, Massachusetts, developed around 1849 by a farmer named Ephraim Wales Bull. The grape gets its name directly from the town where Bull cultivated it at his home, known as Grapevine Cottage. What started as one man’s experiment with wild native grapevines became the most widely grown grape variety in the eastern United States and the grape behind nearly every bottle of grape juice and jar of grape jelly on American store shelves.
How Ephraim Wales Bull Created the Concord Grape
Bull wasn’t a professional botanist. He was a New England farmer who became obsessed with breeding a better grape from the wild vines growing around Massachusetts. The native American grape species in the region, Vitis labrusca, produced fruit that was hardy enough to survive New England winters but often too tough or sour to eat. Bull spent years cross-pollinating and selecting seedlings from wild labrusca vines, looking for a combination of cold hardiness, reliable ripening, and good flavor.
Around 1849, he landed on the variety that would bear his town’s name. The Concord grape ripened earlier than most other varieties available at the time, survived harsh northeastern winters, and had a bold, sweet flavor that people loved. Bull exhibited the grape publicly in the early 1850s, and it spread rapidly through American agriculture. It was exactly what growers in cold climates had been waiting for: a grape that didn’t require the mild conditions of European wine regions.
Bull himself, despite creating one of the most commercially successful fruit varieties in American history, reportedly made very little money from it. Nurseries propagated and sold the vine widely, but Bull saw few of the profits. His gravestone in Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery reads: “He sowed, others reaped.”
What Makes Concord Grapes Different
Concord grapes are unmistakable once you know what to look for. They produce medium-sized clusters of large, blue-black berries with a dusty bloom on the skin. The most distinctive physical trait is the “slip skin,” meaning the tough outer skin separates easily from the soft, pulpy flesh inside. You can pop a Concord grape into your mouth and squeeze the inner fruit right out of the skin with your tongue. This is a hallmark of American labrusca-type grapes and completely unlike the thin, firmly attached skins of European table grapes.
The flavor is equally distinctive. Concord grapes have a strong, fruity taste sometimes described as “foxy,” a term grape breeders use for the intense, musky sweetness characteristic of labrusca varieties. If you’ve ever had grape juice, grape jelly, or grape-flavored candy, you already know the Concord flavor profile. It’s the reason artificial grape flavoring tastes nothing like a green table grape from the supermarket: it’s modeled after the Concord.
The slip-skin trait does come with trade-offs. The tender skins can crack when rain hits during ripening, and the berries tend to drop off the cluster after harvest. They also contain seeds. These qualities make Concords less popular as a fresh eating grape compared to seedless European varieties, but they’re ideal for processing into juice, jelly, and wine.
Where Concord Grapes Grow Today
Although the Concord grape was born in Massachusetts, the biggest growing regions shifted westward as the grape industry expanded. Washington State became the largest producer of Concords, with roughly 19,000 acres planted and average yields around 7 tons per acre. New York State followed as the second-largest producer, with annual production around 140,000 tons, concentrated heavily in the Lake Erie region along the state’s western border. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio also grow significant quantities.
These regions share a few things in common: cold winters that Concord vines tolerate well, enough summer warmth to ripen the fruit, and proximity to large bodies of water that moderate temperature extremes. The Lake Erie grape belt, stretching from western New York through Pennsylvania and into Ohio, is one of the densest Concord-growing areas in the country. Washington’s Columbia Basin, with its irrigated desert climate and dramatic day-to-night temperature swings, produces some of the highest yields per acre.
Why the Concord Grape Took Over
The Concord’s dominance in the American grape market has as much to do with timing and chemistry as it does with flavor. In the 1860s, a dentist and prohibitionist named Thomas Welch figured out how to pasteurize Concord grape juice to prevent it from fermenting into wine. His “unfermented wine” became the foundation of the Welch’s brand, and suddenly there was massive commercial demand for a grape that had only been around for about 15 years.
Concord grapes also turned out to be remarkably well suited to large-scale agriculture. The vines are vigorous, disease-resistant compared to European varieties, and productive in climates where other grapes struggle. They don’t need the careful, labor-intensive management that wine grapes demand. For farmers in the Northeast and Pacific Northwest, Concords offered a reliable crop with a guaranteed buyer in the juice and jelly industry.
Today, the vast majority of Concord grapes never reach a grocery store as fresh fruit. They go directly to processing facilities where they become juice, jelly, jam, and flavoring. That single variety developed by a Massachusetts farmer over 170 years ago still defines what “grape flavored” means to most Americans.