The Unrespected Fruit

Consider the grape. We subject the fruit to few things we subject any other food to.

We leave the grape standing out until it dries to a wrinkled shadow of itself - then eat it. Would you eat a wrinkled cantaloupe or a dehydrated banana? Of course not - that's why rename the dried aftermath of a grape. We call it a raisin. And we convince ourselves the raisin is a dietary chewy delight.

I have to wonder - how did we ever get the word raisin from grape? I could see drape - a merging of the words dried and grape - but raisin, where did that come from?

We squish grapes too. Notice I didn't say squeeze. That's because we don't squeeze grapes for their juice - we mash them into a pulp. We stomp on and pulverize the grape. The resulting mash is then put into a container where it sits until it goes beyond sour. The mash ferments and morphs into alcohol. We then drink the alcohol - probably to come to grips with what we've just done to the grape.

If our kids leave milk or orange juice standing in a glass for days on end we accuse our children of being irresponsible. Yet we consider it perfectly acceptable to ignore a container of squashed grapes for months at a time.

Go figure.