Fruity fortune for auction with those grapes of wrath

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

When I happened upon a recent headline that read: “Bunch of Grapes sells for £8,350”, I thought that seemed like an extraordinarily low price to pay for one of Galway’s most popular pubs.

And indeed it was ridiculous…but for a whole other reason – because that was what someone paid for an actual stem of grapes at an auction in Japan.

The bunch of about thirty grapes, each roughly the size of a table tennis ball, are of the Ruby Roman variety and sold for 1.1m yen – or in our currency, about €320 a grape.

And immediately there are a couple of issues here – who knew, for example, that you bought grapes at an auction? And who could feel entirely happy about swallowing a €320 grape?

It was news too that the Japanese consider this particular Ruby Roman variety to be a status symbol – perhaps the symbol of the ‘more money than sense’ brigade.

Incredibly this mind-bogglingly expensive grape isn’t even top of the fruit charts – that honour falls to the melon, which serves as a status symbol akin to a vintage wine, and is given as a high-ranking gift.

A pair of melons fetched 1.5m yen at an auction last year – and let’s have no cheap jibes about Samantha Fox.

The back story to these Ruby Roman grapes is that they are only grown in Ishikawa prefecture – and to qualify for their special status, each grape must weigh at least twenty grams and have a sugar content of at least eighteen per cent.

They even have their own website run by the Ishikawa prefecture, tracking the cultivation back to 1992 when seeds of the Fujiminori variety were sown.

Over the years, they were then cultivated into the Roman Ruby variety, which was named after submissions from the public in 2004. The first grapes went on sale in 2008, and prices have been rising ever since.

The buyer of this bunch of grapes was a man called Takamaru Konishi from western Japan, who was thrilled to display them at his store before giving his customers a sample taste.

You’d understand it more if the grapes came in the form of wine because we all spent a little more than we should, under the influence.

A friend of mine, for example, came home from a charity golf night once, having paid €200 for a pair of socks worn by the guest of honour, a former Ryder Cup star.

Said star, it must be said, was rather surprised to fetch such a high price for his socks. And despite the two hundred quid for the charity, it made for an uncomfortable night for him, wearing his shoes sockless.

Because these €200 socks were just the ones he grabbed from the sock drawer that morning – he hadn’t worn them at Muirfield or the Belfry or even playing crazy golf.

To read Dave’s column in full, please seet his week’s Connacht Tribune.