“Wenger Family Brings the Taste of Childhood to the Valley,” story by Heather Cole, was published in the Spring/Summer 2024 edition of This Augusta Community Guide.
Grape juice. Grape jelly. Grape candy. When you think of the grape flavor of your favorite childhood treats, it likely bears little resemblance to the thin-skinned, crunchy, red or white (and often imported) table grapes that are available year-round at your local grocery store. Instead, the flavor that most people recognize as grape is that of the Concord grape: tangy, sweet, a bit musky and undeniably grapey. “It is a sweet, old-timey grape flavor,” says Wendy Wenger Hochstedler, proprietor of Wenger’s Grapes, a family-run vineyard in Waynesboro, Virginia.
Unfortunately, Concord grapes have a short harvest season and don’t transport well, so they can be more difficult to find than their heartier cousins. But for three to four weeks every September, these little purple bursts of nostalgia are available at the Wenger Grapes farm, either fresh off the vines or as pick-your-own.
Wendy and her husband, Mark, are the third generation of the Wenger family growing grapes in Augusta County. Wendy’s grandfather, Paul Wenger, learned the trade from his father and began growing grapes on family land in 1938. Eighty-six years later, the Wengers continue the tradition of providing Concord and other American hybrid grape varieties to local wineries, farmers markets and grocery stores and directly to consumers at their 24-acre vineyard.
Wendy says that the flavor of fresh Concord grapes brings back childhood memories for many visitors to the farm. Among those is Waynesboro resident Marilyn Burkholder, who has been coming to the Wenger farm since the 1990s.
“We had four daughters and would take them out in the wagon to pick grapes,” Burkholder says. “We would load up a couple of baskets of grapes and the girls would run around the vines. It was always a fun time.”
Burkholder says she grew up eating Concord grapes. For the inexperienced, however, eating a Concord grape can be a bit of an adventure. Unlike the familiar seedless table grapes, Concord grapes have thick purple skin that covers a pulpy interior and a center of small seeds. Wendy describes the trick to them:
“First you pull a grape off the bunch and hold it between your thumb and first finger. Then you squeeze it, so the pulp bursts into your mouth with all its flavor and sweetness. The peel will slide right off. You can swallow the pulp and seeds whole. And then, if you want, you can chew the skin.”
In addition to eating them fresh off the vines, Concord grapes are also great for making juice or jelly, and both products are often for sale at the Wenger’s farm stand. Wenger grapes can also be found in the wines produced by several Virginia wineries, including Rockbridge Vineyard and Brewery in Raphine. According to Dianne Rankin, Rockbridge Vineyard’s tasting room manager, their most popular sweet wine is Jeremiah’s, a rose blend of the Wenger’s Concord grapes and Vidal Blanc, a white hybrid grape. Wenger’s grapes are also used to make their Lexington & Concord, a sweet red wind that Rockbridge Vineyards describes as “grown up grape juice.”
Concord grapes are native to North America and are named for the town in Massachusetts where they were first cultivated from wild grapes in 1849. Twenty years later, a New Jersey dentist named Thomas Welch converted 40 pounds of Concord grapes into fruit juice for his local church and the rest is history.
Concord grapes are now mostly grown in upstate New York, southwestern Michigan and Washington state. They are among the group of grapes known as “slip-skin,” meaning that their skins are easily removed. They also grow on their own root stock – rather than via grafting – which makes them better able to adapt to the climate in the Shenandoah Valley. But even that native adaptability has its limits, as the Wengers have seen with the increase in climate volatility.
“It has been a bit of a rollercoaster these last few years,” Mark says, describing a series of extreme weather events that damaged the grape crops in three out of the past four years. 2020 brought a May freeze that impacted the fall crop; a hailstorm came through the farm in April 2021; and another deep freeze hit early last year.
“But our customers have been resilient,” Mark says, adding that ninety percent of the visitors to the farm are repeat customers. The Wenger Grapes’s customers come from across Virginia, Maryland and the mid-Atlantic area, and many families come year after year.
Wendy grew up on the grape farm when it was run by her parents, Dave and Mim Wenger, and remembers that her mother loved to entertain. Wendy says she sees the farm stand and pick-your-own activities as an extension of her family’s hospitality. “I love it when people are here,” Wendy says. “I love seeing all the different people.”
When asked why they continue despite the challenges at the farm, Wendy speaks both about the nostalgia of carrying on a family tradition and the importance of teaching people about the sources of their food.
“There are not a whole lot of places left where you can go to a farm and pick your own produce,” Wendy says. “It is a ton of work. But it lets us carry on a tradition and help people connect to the earth. We look forward to having people on the farm for many years to come.”
Wenger Grapes is located at 4094 Stuarts Draft Highway in Waynesboro, about two miles west of the intersection with 1-64. Depending on the weather, Concord grape harvest season usually begins around Labor Day and continues through the month of September. During harvest season, the farm stand and pick-yourown is open Monday through Saturday from 8:00 a.m. until dark.
Visit their website for details: https://wengergrapes.com
