Black Eagle GrapeBLACK EAGLE

A renowned table grape of the late nineteenth century, Black Eagle was the result of a cross between Vitis labrusca (Concord) and Vitis Vinefera (Black Prince) parents by fruit hybridizer Stephen Underhill in 1866.  The same parents produced another strain of lesser importance, Underhill's Black Defiance.  Black Eagle, however, won instant acclaim for its beautiful vinefera style leaf, its lustrous purple-black berries, and the massy clusters of grapes--up to a pound and a half under ideal conditions--the vine produced.  Another virtue was its early ripening.  

Requiring pollination from other grape varieties, Black Eagle proved a home vineyard variety.  The vine's proneness to rotting made Black Eagle not viable as a mass market variety.  Horticulturist S. A. Beach of the New York Experimental Station gave a tasting report in 1893: "Flesh rich and melting, with little pulp" Illustrated Descriptive Catalogue of American Grape Vines, 23].  

In the South the variety was championed by P. J. Berkmans who encountered it during the course of his volunteer work on the new varieties evaluation committee of the American Pomological Society.  He exhibited it in Georgia in 1887, and commentators found the grape "exquisite in flavor" though the bunches were not as massive as initially reported.  Ulysses Hedrick found the variety only modestly productive.  He described the fruit with characteristic cogency:  "Fruit mid-season, keeps well. Clusters large, long, tapering single- or double shouldered, compact; pedicel long, slender with few warts; brush short, pale green. Berries variable in size, oval, black, glossy with thick bloom; skin tender, thin, adherent with wine-colored pigment; flesh pale green, translucenter, tender, vinous; good." [Manual of American Grape Growing, 1918, 338]. 

A seedling of Black Eagle with red fruit was developed by Texas hybridizer T. V. Munson into an offshoot variety of some significance, the Red Eagle grape.  

Because of its self-sterility and because of a tendency to black rot, the Black Eagle variety was abandoned in the early 20th century making it functionally extinct.  It is not currently listed in the National Grape Registry.

Image:  U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD 20705, no creator listed, no date of production registed.

David S. Shields