Editing Muscat (grape) (section)

=== Muscat of Hamburg ===
[[File:Rudolf Goethe04.jpg|left|thumb|Muscat of Hamburg from an 1895 German viticultural text]]
Even though the vast majority of the members of the Muscat family are dark skinned grapes,<ref name="Oxford"/> most of the major varieties used in wine production are white or "pale skinned", with the one significant exception of [[Muscat of Hamburg]], which is also known as ''Black Muscat''. This dark-skinned grape is believed to have originated in the [[Victorian (era)|Victorian]] [[greenhouses]] of England, where it was first described in 1858 as being propagated by Seward Snow, gardener to the [[Earl de Grey]]. Snow described the grape as a seedling that he created from crossing the Black Hamburg grape (an old synonym of ''[[Schiava Grossa]]'') with the White Muscat of Alexandria. In 2003, DNA analysis confirmed that Muscat of Hamburg was, indeed, a crossing of Muscat of Alexandria and Schiava Grossa, which makes the grape a full sibling to the central Italian grape ''[[Malvasia del Lazio]]'' which has the same parentage.<ref name="Wine Grapes"/>

While Muscat of Hamburg is used mostly as a table grape throughout the world, there are two notable exceptions. The first is in California, where nearly all of the {{convert|102|ha|acres}} of Black Muscat in cultivation in 2009 were destined for wine production, primarily to produce dessert wines.<ref name="Wine Grapes"/> The other exception is in [[China (wine)|China]], where Muscat of Hamburg is often crossed with ''[[Vitis amurensis]]'' species that are native to the region to produce wine grapes that are better adapted to the climate of various Chinese wine regions.<ref name="Oxford"/>