Old South Winery.
65 South Concord Ave.
Natchez MS.
January 19, 1998
On the outskirts of Natchez, you can find a somewhat misleading building front
which at first glance might not beckon you to enter. Fear not, inside you will
find the warmth and charm of Scott Galbreath III, and perhaps his parents who
own the business.
This family produces the most interesting sweet wine made out
of a local fruit known as Vitis rotundifolia, commonly called muscadine,
which is native to the southern states and grows nowhere else
save as an exotic.
The muscadine, it is no exaggeration to say,
could well be substituted for cotton in the first line of "Dixie"
if one were to bow to botanical realism. The scuppernong variety
of muscadine has a tough skin and is bronzy green in color, rather
than black or purplish as were its ancestors.
Its size, to use
traditional Tarheel parlance, is "about that of a hog's eye."
As is the case with all muscadines, the fruit does not grow in
conventional bunches, and when ripe it can be readily shaken from
its vine. Its abundant juice is so deliciously sweet, with a
kind of musky, fruity flavor, that when its unusual color attracted
attention, in the general vicinity of present day Columbia, N.C.,
possibly toward the end of the eighteenth century,
specimens were
transplanted or seeds or cuttings sown on neighboring farms and
gardens whence in time its reputation spread throughout the botanical
world. At first it was simply called the Big White Grape, for
the name scuppernong, as we shall see, was not applied to it until
some time after its choice qualities and immense productiveness
were known in the Tidewater region of North Carolina. It came
to particular notice in Tyrrell County, along the banks of a short
stream that broadens into an arm of Albemarle Sound and had long
since been suprisingly clear, which was also called Scuppernong
Lake, though its official name is Phelps, after one of the two
local hunters who penetrated the dense thickets surrounding it
and "discovered" it in 1755.