Bangalore Blue Grapes (with Seed)

This comes from a Natural Farm in Chikkbalapur. These 100% Natural Seeded Grapes will be sweet and sour.

These grapes have been grown in Karnataka for over 100 years, with British-era wineries and local farmers alike cultivating them for generations. They’ve become part of local culture and economy. Bangalore Blue grapes are Geographical Indication (GI) tagged, meaning they can only be grown in the Bangalore Urban, Chikkaballapur, and Kolar districts. The region’s climate and soil are perfect for this variety

It is nice to eat as is or for making juice, jams and if you are up for it, even some nice wine :-)

Why these grapes are 'Bangalore Blue' ?

• This variety of grapes has been grown for over 100 years in Bangalore, Chikkaballapur and Kolar districts.
• The soil, temperature conditions around Bangalore are perfect for growing this variety.
•  In 2013, 'Bangalore Blue' was granted the GI tag or the Geographical Indication tag identifying this produce to its specific geographical location & indigenous variety
• "If the grapes are grown in any other area it will be devoid of its characteristic flavour and colour," said P Sampath Kumar, principal scientist (horticulture), Division of Fruit Crops, Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Hessaraghatta.
• "The grapes develop their typical colour and slip skin nature at this temperature" he also said (Src : TOI, 2013)
•  Bangalore Blue Grapes Growers' Association ( headquartered in Chikkaballapur)  were able to get patent rights to cultivation of the variety.
• This means you can only refer to them by 'Bangalore Blue' grapes and nothing else 

Story Behind the Farm 

Kiran Kumar, an organic farmer with ancestral farmland near Chikaballapur. 33 years old, and though ITI factory job trained, he decided back to his roots in farming, along with his brother.

Their farmland about 4.5 acres, of which 2.5 acres is devoted to growing grapes and 25 guntas for farming vegetables and 1.5 acres for finger millet. 

In 2009 they planted grape orchards and started growing with chemical farming methods - initially the yield seemed excellent for about three years. But after that they saw their yield coming down each year with increased need of more and more chemical fertilizers and pesticides and the cost of production soaring high. To accompany this, diseases in the crops started increasing every year as well.

This continued till 2015, and when they measured their soil organic carbon percentage it turned out to be a measly 0.30%. At that point the brothers Kiran and Arun, were looking for ways to survive in farming because with high costs and dipping revenues every year, they were looking at only loses.

They heard about zero budget natural farming (ZBNF) and from October 2016 onwards, they decided to start adopting this methodology.

Initially, 2017 and 2018 looked to be tough years.  But instead of getting discouraged, they stayed committed completely to the ZBNF method, and things started turning around in 2019 in terms of soil fertility.

Currently, they have reached 3.5% of soil organic carbon, the soil is healthy and they are too. They would like to give a lot of credit to their pair of desi cows - Malnad Gidda and Hallikar, and also to the millions of earthworms that their farm is teeming with now.