City: Nags Head, NC

Category: Tours & Attractions

Address: Off Mother Vineyard Road

Description: The oldest-known grapevine in the United States grows on Roanoke Island. When the first settlers arrived here, the Outer Banks were covered with wild grapes. Arthur Barlowe wrote to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584: “Being where we first landed very sandy and low toward the water side, but so full of grapes as the very beating and surge of the sea overflowed them, of which we found such plenty, as well there as in all places else, both on the sand and on the green soil, on the hills as in the plains, as well on every little shrub, as also climbing toward the tops of high cedars, that I think in all the world the like abundance is not to be found. ”The Mother Vine is one of those grapevines, so old that it may have been planted even before Europeans arrived in the New World. Certainly it was already old in the 1750s, as records attest, and scuppernong grapevines do not grow swiftly. Another story is that this vine was transplanted to Roanoke Island by some of the Fort Raleigh settlers. Whichever story is true, the Mother Vine is more than 400 years old, and it’s still producing fine, fat, tasty grapes. In fact, for many years a small winery owned by the Etheridge family cultivated the vine on Baum’s Point, making the original Mother Vineyard wine until the late 1950s. Mother Vineyard Scuppernong, the Original American Wine, is still produced by a company in Petersburg, Virginia. It is a pink wine, quite sweet, similar to a white port.The Mother Vine is on private property and a bit out of the way. To find it, drive north from Manteo on US 64. About 0.75 mile past the city limits, turn right onto Mother Vineyard Road. Go less than a half mile, where the road makes a sharp turn to the right at the sound. About 300 feet past the turn, on the left, the patient old vine endures beneath a canopy of leaves, twisted and gnarled, ancient and enduring. Please stay on the road if you’re sneaking a peek.