Wines made from Concord grapes of Illinois
Discover the best wines made with Concord as a single variety or as a blend of Illinois.
It is the result of a seedling planted in the United States, around 1840, recovered near the Concord River, a small river located east of Massachusetts. According to genetic analysis, it is an interspecific cross between the catawba and a vitis labrusca. Concord was for a long time the main variety cultivated in North America. It was introduced into Europe at the beginning of the 19th century, in France at the beginning of the phylloxera crisis, but was not widely propagated. It could be found in the Valleraugue region (Gard) at the foot of Mont Aigoual, in the Ardèche (our photos), etc. Today, it exists only as an isolated strain that can sometimes be found on the edge of a slope, which was our case. Through various and numerous crosses, it has been used to obtain some rootstocks and direct producer hybrids, which have now almost all disappeared.
Illinois is a U. S. state located South of the Great Lakes region and bordered by Missouri to the west and Indiana to the east. The state is one of the fastest-growing wine producers in the United States; the number of wineries doubled in the late 1990s and now stands at over 100.