It’s summertime. Wait, no, it’s fall. Now, it’s summer again. Fall. Summer. The weather can’t decide. The only certainty is that it’s September, AKA Muscadine Month, time to find where the wild grapes grow.

On the first day of September, my son and his friend scoured our neighborhood for muscadines. The boys braved greenbrier, mosquitoes, poison ivy, and eye-level spears of yaupon to harvest their grape gold. Then, they brought the fruit home to rinse and dry. They weighed half-pound portions on a mail scale, bagged, priced, and sold their grapes on the street corner.

Did they have any buyers?

Do squirrels play tag?

Standing by a stop sign on a vacant lot, the boys called out, “Grapes for sale, two dollars a bag!” and the muscadine lovers came running. Not a single buyer needed to be told how to eat their purchase. Like oysters, muscadines are an acquired taste, and once learned, are never forgotten.

And like oysters, these grapes grow wild in coastal North Carolina.

The term muscadine refers to the species Vitis rotundifolia. The most common variety is purple-black in color, with thick skin and bitter ovate seeds. Another type, the scuppernong, is green-brown and harder to find. And even tastier. If you find a patch of scuppernongs, don’t tell anyone. Except me.

To find muscadines, search the edges of vacant lots, forested trails, and your own backyard. They are as common as pine trees and prefer similar conditions. However, these grapes are not as frequently consumed as their grocery store counterparts. There are three good reason for this.

First, they tend to be just out of arm’s reach, as they require full sun to produce fruit. Also, the low-hanging bunches have already been picked over by eight-year-olds.

Second, their skins are too thick for most folks to enjoy. The standard method is to bite the grape, sending the pulp shooting into the back of the mouth. A jiggle, a sluice, a squeeze, and the seeds are worked free. Seeds and skin are spit out, cherry-pit-style, and only a drop of juice remains for the effort.

Third, muscadines don’t keep or ship well. They’re best consumed straight off the vine. Be prepared to eat what you find within a day or two.

If all that’s too difficult, but you still crave the uniquely honey-sweet taste of our wild NC grapes, there’s a wine for that.

Duplin County Winery produces a line of muscadine wines, something for every palate, from dry to ninety-percent humidity. If you’re not sure where you fall along the spectrum, plan a visit – the winery is less than two hours away.

Or if you’re lucky, you might catch those scuppernongs and muscadines for sale at local produce stands, where they disappear as quickly as ghost crabs skittering into sandy burrows.

And keep an eye out for young entrepreneurs – it’s the best two dollars you’ll spend all season.