🍇 Suelter

Suelter is an American grape variety with dark berries, which VIVC classes as a table grape. It was bred by Louis Suelter of the small town of Carver in Minnesota; the catalogue dates the cross to 1883. The parents are given as a wild white riparia vine, recorded in the catalogue as the variety Carver, and Concord. This parentage has not been checked with DNA markers.

According to Thomas Munson's book of 1909, Suelter found this white vine growing wild near Carver — Munson considered it the only known white form of the species — and pollinated it with Concord pollen. The seeds produced several similar black varieties of medium size that ripened very early. Four of them were named: Beta, Dakota, Monitor and Suelter. In Minnesota their vines withstood −40 °F without damage, which is the same as −40 °C.

Munson wrote that Suelter ripens earlier than Champion and is clearly better, especially for wine. Unlike its three siblings, it did not have erect stamens. It was on his list for the coldest north-western states, where it was grown without winter protection, though not on very limy soil. In hot Texas all four varieties died within 6–8 years. Hedrick mentions it in 1908 under a misspelled name — Snelter, a seedling of riparia and Concord; the breeder's surname is recorded the same way in VIVC.

Why it matters to you. Suelter is easily confused with the better-known Beta: they share the same breeder and the same cross, but they are different varieties with separate VIVC passports. If an old book mentions Snelter, it means this same variety. Its story shows how the frost-hardy grapes of the American North began: according to Munson, such vines withstood hard frost but could not cope with heat or limy soil.