🍇 Bailey

Bailey is an American table grape with black berries, bred by the Texas breeder T. V. Munson. According to VIVC, it is a cross of Big Berry × Triumph made in 1886: the mother vine is a wild Texas Post-oak grape, and the father is a hybrid of labrusca with the European grape. The variety was named in honour of the botanist L. H. Bailey.

Hedrick's monograph The Grapes of New York (1908) adds detail: Munson took seeds of the wild vine Big Berry pollinated with Triumph; the seeds were sown in 1887, and the first vine bore fruit in 1889–1890. Hedrick stressed that Bailey combines traits of three species, Vitis lincecumii, labrusca and the European grape, which arose in Texas, Massachusetts and Europe.

The vine is vigorous and productive, but at the New York State experiment station the berries often failed to ripen, and the vines were injured in severe winters. Clusters are rather large and compact; berries medium to large, black, with a heavy blue bloom; the skin is strongly astringent, the flesh moderately juicy, vinous and of good quality. The variety ripens unevenly, almost as late as Catawba, and keeps well.

Hedrick considered Bailey valuable for breeding, and this proved true in Japan. Zenbei Kawakami crossed it with Muscat Hamburg and in 1927 obtained Muscat Bailey A, a grape for wine and the table; VIVC notes that this pedigree has been confirmed by genetic markers. Black Queen (Bailey × Golden Queen) comes from the same breeder. Samples of Bailey are kept in 6 collections.

Why it matters to you. If you have tasted a Japanese wine made from Muscat Bailey A, part of its pedigree leads back to this Texas hybrid. Bailey shows how a wild American grape, through breeding, became the basis of varieties on the other side of the world.