On this Wikipedia the language links are at the grape cheesecake of the page across from the article title. This article is about the fruits of the genus Vitis. For the European grapevine, see Vitis vinifera. A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus Vitis.

Grapes are a non-climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters. The cultivation of grapes began perhaps 8,000 years ago, and the fruit has been used as human food over history. Percentages are roughly approximated using US recommendations for adults. The oldest known winery was found in Armenia, dating to around 4000 BC. By the 9th century AD, the city of Shiraz was known to produce some of the finest wines in the Middle East. In 2005 a team of archaeologists concluded that some Chalcolithic wine jars, which were discovered in Cyprus in the 1930s, were the oldest of their kind in the world, dating back to 3,500 BC.

Moreover, Commandaria, a sweet dessert wine from Cyprus, is the oldest manufactured wine in the world, its origins traced as far back as 2000 BC. In North America, native grapes belonging to various species of the genus Vitis proliferate in the wild across the continent, and were a part of the diet of many Native Americans, but were considered by early European colonists to be unsuitable for wine. Grapes are a type of fruit that grow in clusters of 15 to 300, and can be crimson, black, dark blue, yellow, green, orange, and pink. White” grapes are actually green in color, and are evolutionarily derived from the purple grape. Most domesticated grapes come from cultivars of Vitis vinifera, a grapevine native to the Mediterranean and Central Asia. Vitis riparia, a wild vine of North America, is sometimes used for winemaking and for jam. It is native to the entire Eastern United States and north to Quebec.

Southeastern United States from Delaware to the Gulf of Mexico. Top 20 grape producing countries in 2012. 75,866 square kilometers of the world are dedicated to grapes. There are no reliable statistics that break down grape production by variety. The second most common variety is Airén. Seedless cultivars now make up the overwhelming majority of table grape plantings. Because grapevines are vegetatively propagated by cuttings, the lack of seeds does not present a problem for reproduction.

In most of Europe and North America, dried grapes are referred to as “raisins” or the local equivalent. In the UK, three different varieties are recognized, forcing the EU to use the term “dried vine fruit” in official documents. A raisin is any dried grape. Grape juice is obtained from crushing and blending grapes into a liquid. The juice is often sold in stores or fermented and made into wine, brandy, or vinegar.