Grape vine

Grapes are eaten fresh and dried. Sultanas are soft, juicy amber-coloured fruits with a sweet flavour produced from seedless white grapes, mainly Thompson Seedless. Raisins are dark brown and wrinkled with a sweet mellow flavour. Currants are dried, black seedless grapes from a variety called Corinth, grown in Greece for more than 2,000 years.

Wild grapes thrived in the warm, damp, wooded lowland valleys from Turkestan, deep in Asia, through Armenia into Thrace. Vine cultivation and wine production kicked off in Armenia. It then spread to Eqypt and Phoenicia and around 4,000 years ago to Greece. The Greeks took the art of viticulture around the Mediterranean and the Romans spread the knowledge up the river valleys into France and Germany.

This artwork by Tim Shaw among the grape vines in Eden's Mediterranean Biome is called 'The Rites of Dionysus'. The sculptures depict the myth of Dionysus, Greek god of the vines, and his followers, the Maenads, who dance and writhe through the vines beating drums and sounding trumpets.