Joy, Faith, Gratitude, and Hope are the newest grape varieties coming out of the University of Arkansas’s research program to develop market style productive grapes for the wet, buggy South East. I don’t grow any of the new ones, but I grow their popular Jupiter variety on its own trellis.  It’s disappointing, to be honest. The flavor is bland and it didn’t even sweeten up to the point where it was worth picking last year. The birds weren’t as fussy. UoA's Venus was seedy and also bland-now gone. Their Reliance is good and actually has some flavor, even though it’s more mild than my favorites. It ripens at a good time between other good grape varieties.

 California is as much “grape paradise” as it is ‘fig paradise”, so all the factors that make a good supermarket grape aren’t as important for me. As a home gardener, I only grow fruit for their strong flavors and especially like the Muscat flavor in grapes. If I wanted bland, supermarket grapes, I’d buy them at the grocery store. I read somewhere that strong flavored grapes are weeded out by university programs because they don't sell to people raised on bland supermarket grapes and expect that lack of flavor. 

One of the most innovative programs in the local schools was a "Fruit of the Week" program sponsored as an extension of the school lunch program. The schools all provide fresh fruit at lunch time, like Red Delicious apples, but they taste so bad the children won't eat them. In "Fruit of the Week", one fruit was taught every few weeks with its own curriculum materials and the program provided quality fruit for the children to try in class and even take home. Fruit trees were planted at the schools. It resulted in more attention being given fresh fruits by the school lunch people, better quality fruit served and more fruit being eaten instead of dumped. I drove by one of the local schools where I worked at the time and only one fruit tree had survived over the years. I guess they weren't watered over the summer. One grandfather had started a strawberry patch there for the children but it passed when he did.