Eumelan

Eumelan is a black-berried American grape. VIVC files it under Vitis labrusca and records it, as the breeder or bibliography gave it, as an open-pollinated seedling of Isabella raised by Thorne in 1847; no DNA check is listed. A classification printed in the proceedings of the 1881 International Phylloxera Congress in Bordeaux put it instead in the southern aestivalis group, so its family remains to be settled. In the Gironde the earliest record in my library is that same congress. At the Domaine du Vallier at Langoiran, M. Delbruck, who began growing American vines in 1875, had newer plantings of “direct producers, Herbemont, Jacquez, Elvira, Eumelan, and Cynthiana” («Les plantations en producteurs directs, Herbemont, Jacquez, Elvira, Eumélan et Cynthiana»), still at their first fruit in 1881.

Oldest record in my library: Compte rendu général du Congrès international phylloxérique de Bordeaux, 1881