Lutie GrapeLUTIE 

A seedling grape discovered in a vineyard on the outskirts of Nashville by Dr. L. C. Chisolm in the early 1880s, the Lutie grape proved a variety suited to southern cultivation.  It premiered in 1885's American Pomological Society exhibition and enjoyed intense popularity in the South.  It was a natural cross between a Moore's Early and another, unknown variety.  [George Campbell, "American Grapes," Proceedings of the Twentieth Session of the American Pomological Society (1886), 85.]  Chisolm, who maintained over a 100 varieties of hybrid grapes in his vineyard, was particularly impressed by the vigor of the vine, its productivity, its imperviousness to mildew, and its early fruiting.  There was intense debate as to its eating quality.  Indeed, the disparity of views between viticulturists of great standing about the taste of the grape eventually forced the realization that the chemistry of the grape altered rapidly after picking.  Fresh plucked from the vine: "The flavor of this grape far excelled the well-known Delaware, and is equal to the Hamburg or Muscat, the celebrated green house grapes of the Old World, and a perfectly green Lutie is sweeter than a dead-ripe Concord or Ives."  After several days:  "They were simply fox grapes of the most odorous character."  

The diverging judgments about the grape led to its peculiar subsequent history.  Before the turn of the twentieth century it had been dropped by virtually all northern and western commercial nurseries.  But its resistance to black rot and downy mildew, productivity, and good flavor when fresh picked gave it an intense following in the South (aside from Texas), so much so that in Tennessee it was the predominant red grape grown as late as the 1920s.  Commercial sources outside of Tennesse included Van Lindley Nurseries in Pomona, North Carolina and Moreland Nursery in Moreland, Georgia.  It survives in several germ plasm repositories and in some old Nurseries in the mountain South.  

"It is of a light chocolate color, bunch slightly shouldered, very compact and firm, stem adhering firmly to the vine."  

Image: U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD 20705, Mary Arnold, 1916.

David S. Shields