Posted on 07/10/2019 6:50:25 PM PDT by SMGFan
Visitors to a hot spring in central Japan will soon be able to snack on $460 grapes, or rather, grape.
That's after the manager of a chain of hot spring hotels in Ishikawa Prefecture, on the northern coast of the main Honshu island, became the winning bidder for a bunch of Ruby Roman grapes at an auction in Kanazawa on Tuesday. Takashi Hosokawa will pay 1.2 million yen, or around $11,000, for the 24 plump, deep red grapes prized for their juiciness, high sugar content and low acidity. It's the most expensive bunch since the breed came to market 12 years ago, the auctioneers said.
"We offered 1.2 million yen to mark the 12 years and to celebrate Reiwa's first auction," Hosokawa told reporters, referring to the country's new era, which began in May with the coronation of Emperor Naruhito.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Raisins!
Years ago I saw that in Japan an absolutely perfect cantaloupe went for an astounding price, at the time it was like four or five thousand dollars. In today’s money would probably would have been that if not more than these grapes.
I was completely freaked out by those cotton candy grapes and looked them up to see if they were infused or injected. They really are bred that way. Very cool, especially for kids.
Ha! As if hundreds of dollars per grape weren’t dumb enough. A tiny little raisin seems even dumber.
While trying to find a place that sells moondrop grape vines, I came across some interesting tips. According to the article I saw, the vineyard that grows those uses several tricks to increase the sweetness as they grow. The one I remember was that they restrict how much water the plant gets in order to slow the ripening. They make sure it has enough water to continue growing, but not enough to ripen the grapes at the rate the plant wants to ripen them. They even go so far as to cover the vines when it rains!
The more sun-hours a grape gets while ripening, the sweeter it will be. By slowing down the ripening process, the grapes have more days in the sun, increasing the sugar content.
Not something I’d probably ever try on my farm, but interesting!
Think of the oatmeal raisin cookie you could make.
As a kid down on the farm, my Mom made oatmeal cookies, but instead of raisins she put in maraschino cherries and black walnuts. Outta’ this world!
For $11,000 he’s getting $50,000 in free advertising.
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How weird is that?
Ah, so desu.
CC
Cotton Candy grapes are hybrids, meaning that the seeds they produce can’t be used to grow more cotton candy grapes. You have to take a regular (I believe Concord) grape and cross-polinate by hand. Same with donut peaches, which I also love.
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