The world’s oldest cultivated grapevine has been growing on Roanoke Island, North Carolina for more than 400 years. The island is also home to North America’s first European settlement.

The grapevines of North Carolina were first mentioned in 1524 by Florentine explorer Giovanni de Verrazzano. Soon after, North Carolina was officially discovered by Sir Walter Raleigh in the 1580s on one of his expeditions to the New World at the behalf of Queen Elizabeth I.

In 1584, his explorers, Philip Amadas and Arthur Baslow landed on Roanoke and Bodie Islands. They noted that the lush coastline was studded with twisting vines loaded with musky, fat, globe-shaped grapes called Scuppernong. The greenish-bronze hued fruit takes its Native American Algonquian Tribe name for the Scuppernong Lake and River that reaches all the way from the mountainous western region of North Carolina to the Atlantic coast.

Scuppernong is a Muscadine grape from the Vitis Rotundifolia grape family. (Most wines we are familiar with come from grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, part of the Vitis Vinferia.)

Scuppernong Wine Health Benefits: Muscadines are packed with 88 healthy phytonutrients and polyphenolic antioxidants known to help protect the body from free radicals, which contribute to degenerative diseases.

Roanoke Island’s 400-year-old Mother Vine was first mentioned in writing in 1720, but legends go much further back in history, into Native American historical lore.

Roanoke Island may sound familiar to history buffs because it was home to the Lost Colony of 1587. Under the governorship of John White, a group of 117 British settlers landed on Roanoke Island in August of 1587. White returned to England for supplies, and due to wars with Spain, was delayed in his return until August of 1590. To his perplexed surprise, there wasn’t any trace of the settlers or their possessions, except one carved work on a wooden post, “Croatoan.” They had vanished and the mystery of their disappearance has never been solved.

Colonialists and plantation farmers raised Scuppernong / Muscadine grapes alongside more traditional European varietals, French hybrids, Vitis Labrusca, fruit orchards, and tobacco fields.  The Scuppernong is particularly well suited to the warm and humid climates and are known for their sweet, musky, rustic wines.

Wine was always an important agricultural commodity to early Americans and North Carolina was a main wine-producing state in the budding new country until the mid-19th century. The Civil War, followed by Prohibition destroyed much of the successful commercial wine industry and it languished for decades after.

North Carolinian wine has begun an exciting resurgence, in part, to the efforts of William A. V. Cecil and the Biltmore Estate who explored wine production as early as 1971. Around that same time, regional farmers began to devote plots of land to vines and before they knew it, North Carolinian wine was making its mark again.