The center is moving next week from the FAMU campus to its new home at 6505 Mahan Drive, site of the former Lafayette Winery. The winery closed in 1992, and FAMU purchased the property in 1995. State and federal funds have paid for the renovation of the winery into laboratories and offices. Already, Lu's crew has been growing muscadines behind the building on about 10 acres. They've got every kind of muscadine that grows in the Southeast, and they're breeding many variations thereof.
Muscadines are sweet native grapes that thrive in the hot, wet South.
They have thick skins, and their seeds tend to stick to their flesh. He's happy to show customers how to eat a native Southern grape. First, he says, bite into the grape at the spot where the skin is broken from being picked. Spit out the seeds, and you can either chew the flesh or just slurp it down whole, oyster-style, Daniel says. Windy Hill has 16 varieties of grapes, he said, and he expects they'll last at least through this weekend and possibly longer.