Honey sweet grapes from Yeongdong county

“Good grapes are dark and smear one’s hand white. Some misunderstand that the white stuff is agricultural chemicals but it is sugar from grapes. If you want to test how sweet it is, try the one dangling at the very end of the grape. If it is sweet, that means the entire grape is sweet.”

Nam Seong-ro, 9, head of the Yeongdong Grape Association, who has grown grapes for about 40 years in Jinae-ri in Yeongdong County of North Chungcheong Province, is busy harvesting grapes. So are other some 4,000 farms in the county. The county is the largest grape producer in Korea with 33,796 tons of grapes in 2,218 hectares as of last year.

Starting with "Delaware" from greenhouses in May, farmers harvest "Campbell Early" from fields. Campbell Early, the most consumed kind on Korea, is now common in the market these days. The Yeongdong County located at the foot of Mt. Sobaek is adequate for growing grapes because it has a large daily temperature difference and lots of sunshine. Grapes grown in the region is highly sweet with 14-16 brix (one brix is equivalent to one gram of sugar in 100 grams of water) and boast their unique fragrance.