Do Concord grapes have an anti-Semitic past?

Jewish family history covers an increasing number of topics. And what could be more Jewish than the over-sweetened Concord grape wine on which we grew up?

"Squeeze a Concord grape, and it practically screams kosher wine. Jelly sweet, the much maligned Concord has been the traditional kosher wine of choice at American Passover Seders for what seems like forever. So brace yourself for irony: The Concord has a suspected antisemitic horticultural past."

Here's the story of Ephraim Wales Bull of Concord, Massachusetts, whose gang included Thoreau, Emerson and Hawthorne.

According to the article, the author of a book about American agriculture claims that Bull sought to commercially develop a local wild grape out of a belief that foreign grapes were genetically and morally corrupt. Bull was part of a group, called nativists, who were anti-immigration. In 1844, Lewis Levin was the first Jew elected to Congress. He was a founding member of the American Party, based on nativism.

Eastern European Jews arrived in masses at the end of the 19th century, and Galizianer Sam Schapiro was among them. In 1899, he opened a Lower East Side winery: Schapiro’s House of Kosher Wine, the first kosher winery in North America.