I Can’t Sleep - Shine Muscat Grapes | Gentle Reading for Sleep

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

Drift off with a calm bedtime reading about Shine Muscat grapes, created to support sleep and ease insomnia through gentle learning. This calm bedtime reading blends peaceful facts with a relaxed pace that encourages sleep while comforting listeners through insomnia and restless nights. In this episode, Benjamin softly explores the origins, cultivation, and unique qualities of Shine Muscat grapes, offering something interesting to learn while your body unwinds. His steady, soothing cadence creates a relaxing atmosphere with calm, fact-filled storytelling designed to reduce stress and quiet anxious thoughts. If insomnia, tension, or a busy mind keeps you awake, press play, get comfortable, and let this peaceful bedtime reading guide you gently toward sleep. Happy sleeping! Read with permission from Shine Muscat, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shine_Muscat), and Grape, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a Glassbox Media podcast. What if I told you that most of the modern day self-help advice you've been hearing could actually make you worse? The key to a better life isn't about feel-good gimmicks that sound catchy. The Mentally Stronger Podcast gives you access to a licensed therapist who shares science-backed tools that will actually change your life. Hi, I'm Amy Morin, psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author. In each episode, we cover research-back strategies, like how to stop relying on willpower and start creating habits for lasting change. And the five mental strength-building exercises you can do from your couch. I also speak to world-class experts like Dr. Nicole Kane, who shares how to permanently heal anxiety by addressing the root cause.

With over 200 episodes in our catalog, this podcast is for you if you're ready to crush self-doubt, conquer challenges, become stronger than ever with therapist-approved strategies that can change your life. Listen to Mentally Stronger with therapist Amy Morin, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast where I help you drift off one fact at a time. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster, and today's episode is about Shine Muscat grapes. Shine muscat is a diploid table grape cultivar resulted from across of Akitsu 21 and Hakonan made by National Institute of Fruit Tree Science in Japan in 1988.

It has large yellow green berries, crisp flesh texture, muscat flavor, high soluble solids concentration, and low acidity. Nomenclature registration number is Grape Agriculture and Forestry Number 21. NIFS registered Shine Muscat as a plant variety domestically in Japan in 2006. But its international protection lapsed because the variety was not registered for global protection within the six-year UPOV deadline. By 2012, the variety was effectively treated as unprotected outside Japan. Allowing growers in countries such as China and South Korea to propagate it legally

without paying royalties. In response, Japan passed legislation in 2021, restricting the overseas sale of seeds and seedlings, enabling developers to designate export destinations to protect their intellectuals intellectual property. In Japan, Shine Muscat is considered a high-end grape, reportedly selling for up to $100 per bunch. While production in China and South Korea with larger cultivation areas has allowed for more affordable prices and a substantial increase in global market share. It is a cultivar that was bred at the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences' grape research

Center, formerly the Akizu branch of the Fruit Tree Experiment Station of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, in Akitsu Cho, Higashi-Huroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, and is an early maturing variety that ripens in mid-August in Hiroshima, where it was bred. The Muscat of Alexandria, commonly known as Muscat in Japan, is a grape with good taste in texture, but European grapes, including this species, are prone to cracking and disease in areas with heavy rainfall, and are not suited to the Japanese climate, requiring facilities such as glasshouses for cultivation. Resistance to disease and tolerant of the Japanese climate, American grapes are difficult to bite through and are generally considered to be less palatable than

European grapes. It also has a unique aroma called Foxy scent. To improve on these shortcomings, the cultivar Steuben, which has the highest sugar content of all American grapes, and musket of Alexandria were crossed, and grape Akitsu 21 was born. This Akitsu 21 had a flesh similar to Muscat of Alexandria and was rather large. but it had a not so good aroma, a mixture of musket and foxy sense. Therefore, a large-grained European grape cultivar called Hakunan, a cross between Katagurgan and Kaiji, which was created at the Uohara Grape Research Institute in Yamanashi Prefecture,

was crossed with a variety that had the best quality and taste, but gave up badly due to skin-contracture. contamination, and this variety with only muscat aroma was born. The grapes were selected from the seedlings of a cross between Akitsu No. 21 and Hakonan in 1988. And from 1999 to 2002, the grapes were named Grape Akitsu No. 23 and submitted to a strain adaptability test to examine their characteristics nationwide. named Shine Muscat and registered on September 5th, 2003 as grape number 21 of agriculture

and forestry, and registered on March 9, 2006 as grape number 13,891, valid for 30 years. The grape Akitsu 21 was created by crossing Muscat of Alexandria was Steuben, a cultivar with a sweet high sugar content among American grapes. The clusters are cylindrical and weigh 400 to 500 grams. The color of maturity is yellowish green and the grains are short and oval. The size is 11 to 12 grams, about the same as Kyoho. It has a high sugar content of about 20 degrees and a low acid content of 0.3 to 0.4 grams per 100 milliliters. With chiborellin treatment, the whole skin can be eaten without seeds. The leaves are green in color and wavy at maturity. The underside of the leaf is densely covered with flat-line hairs.

In terms of climate, the grapes are relatively resistant to cold and the color does not deteriorate even when the summer is extremely hot. In terms of taste, texture, and aroma, it is comparable to European grapes in quality. It also has excellent storability. It is a vigorous tree that can produce its first harvest three years after planting. For the production of relatively large grains and bunches, shape the flower ear to 3.5 to 4 centimeters, adjust the axis to 9.5 to 10 centimeters,

at about 15 days after full bloom, and place 4 to 5 seeds on the upper stalk and 2 to 3 seeds on the middle to lower stock to make a cluster of 45 to 50 seeds. The method of producing seedless or large fruits using gibberellin, a type of plant growth hormone, was developed in Japan. This method has been adapted to shine muscat as well as many other grapes for table grapes. It is important to note that the timing and concentration of the treatment is strictly regulated by the type of grape. Many of these methods have been patented.

This process makes the skin thin and the fruit edible as is. Japan's National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, the developer of Shireaulde, muscat, registered the variety domestically in 2006, but did not seek protection overseas, as it was not initially intended for export. Seedlings were later introduced to South Korea and China, where they were cultivated and sold at lower prices than in Japan. Legally propagating a plant variety abroad depends on whether international plant variety rights are in force. Under the 1991 Act of the International Convention for the Protection

of New Varieties of Plans, a new grape variety must be registered internationally within six years of its registration in the country of origin to preserve exclusive rights abroad. For Shine Muscat, this deadline was 2012. Japan did not file for international registration within this period, and its intellectual property protection outside Japan expired, leaving it unable to collect overseas royalties. As a result, growers and other countries were legally entitled to propagate in market-shined muscat without compensating Japan. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries estimates an annual economic loss of 10 billion

yen a year for Japan in this case. In South Korea, Yung Chun, Kimcheng, Songju, Gyeongsong and Yungju in Guernbuk are the regions which produce Shine Muscats and export their products about one-third the price in Japan. Korean varieties of Shine Muscat are sold in markets such as Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Chinese products are exported overseas at even lower prices. In 2022, the South China Morning Post reported that in Hong Kong, Shine muscat grapes from Japan sold for $100 to $500 Hong Kong per bunch and Korean varieties up to $300 Hong Kong,

limiting their appeal among price-sensitive consumers. By comparison, Chinese muscat price-sensitive consumers, priced at 50 to 100 Hong Kong dollars per bunch, has been more affordable and has gained market share in recent years. A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus vitus. Grapes are non-climactic type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters. The cultivation of grapes began approximately 8,000 years ago, and the fruit The food has been used as human food throughout its history. Eating fresh or in dried form as raisins, currants, and sultanas, grapes also hold cultural

significance in many parts of the world, particularly for their role in winemaking. Other grape-derived products include various types of jam, juice, vinegar, and oil. The Middle East is generally described as the homeland of grapes, and the cultivation of this plant began there 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. Yeast, one of the earliest domesticated microorganisms, occurs naturally on the skins of grapes, leading to the discovery of alcoholic drinks such as wine. The earliest archaeological evidence for a dominant position of winemaking in human culture dates from 8,000 years ago in Georgia.

The oldest known winery, the Arrani One Winery, was found in Armenia and dates back to around 4,000 BC. By the 9th century A.D., the city of Shiraz was known to produce some of the finest wines in the Middle East. Thus it has been proposed that Surah wine is named after Shiraz, a city in Persia, where the grape was used to make Shirazi wine. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics record the cultivation of purple grapes, and history attests to the ancient Greeks, Cypriots, Phoenicians, and Romans,

growing purple grapes for eating and wine production. The growing of grapes would later spread to other rites, regions in Europe, North Africa, and eventually in North America. In 2005, a team of archaeologists concluded the Calcolithic wine jars discovered in Cyprus in the 1930s, dated back to 3,500 BC, making them the oldest of their kind in the world. Commandaria is the oldest manufactured wine in the world with origins as far back as 2000 BC. In North America, native grapes belonging to various species of the genus Vitus proliferate in the wild across the continent, and were a part of the diet of many Native Americans. But early European colonists considered them to be unsuitable for wine.

In the 19th century, Eiff from Bull of Concord, Massachusetts, cultivated seeds from wild vitus labrusca vines, to create the Concord Grape, which would become an important agricultural crop in the United States. Grapes are a type of berry fruit that grow in clusters of 15 to 300. The berries appear within a 60-day period after fertilization, first producing tartaric acid, then later malic acid, when their flesh increases in reaction to the hormone of ethylene. These acids give slight sour taste to the berries other than their sweetness. When these young berries reach a ripening stage, the berries change to darker colors,

increase in size, and produce sugars. Ripe grape berries are typically ellipsoid in shape, resembling a prolate spheroid. Their flesh has 75 to 85% watercolors. content. The water is obtained from the plant xylem before ripening. The flume supplies water with soluble sugars, glucose, and fructose following the ripening stage. And the cyanins and other pigment chemicals of the larger family of polyphenols and purple grapes are responsible for the varying shades of purple in the grapeberries and red wines they produce. Various grapes ripen can be crimson, black, dark blue, yellow, green, orange, and pink.

White grapes are actually green in color and are evolutionarily derived from the purple grape. Mutations in two regulatory genes of white grapes turn off production of anthocyanins, which are responsible for the color of purple grapes. Raw grapes are 81% water, 18% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and have negligible fat. A 100 gram reference amount of raw grapes supplies 288 kilojoules of food energy and a moderate amount of vitamin K with no other macronutrients in significant amounts. In 2023, the world total of land dedicated to grape growing was 6,595-680 hectares. By country dedicating farmland for grape growing in 2023, Spain had 913,000 hectares, France, 753,340 hectares,

Italy, 713,350 hectares, and China, 607,30 hectares. Approximately 71% of world grape production is used for wine, 27% as fresh fruit, and 2% as dried fruit. There are no reliable statistics that break down grape production by variety. It is believed that most widely planted variety is Sultana, also known as Thompson seedless, with at least 3,600 square kilometers dedicated to it. In 2023, world production of grapes was 72.5 million tons, led by China with 19% of the total, with Italy and France as major secondary producers. In 2023, the leading exporters of grapes were Peru and Chile, each with more than half a million tons.

Commercially cultivated grapes can usually be classified as either table or wine grapes, based on their intended method of consumption, eaten raw, table grapes, or used to make wine, wine grapes. The sweetness of grapes depends on when they are harvested. as they do not continue to ripen once picked. While almost all belong to the same species, Table and wine grapes have significant differences, brought about through selective breeding. Table grape cultivars tend to have large, seedless fruit, with relatively thin skin.

Wine grapes are smaller, usually seeded, and have relatively thick skins, A desirable characteristic in wine-making, since much of the aroma in wine comes from the skin. Grapes accumulate sugars as they grow on the grape vine through the transportation of sucrose molecules that are produced by photosynthesis from the leaves. During ripening, the sucrose molecules are hydrolyzed, separated into glucose and fructose. Wine grapes tend to be very sweet. They are harvested at the time when their juice is approximately 24% sugar by weight.

By comparison, commercially produced 100% grape juice made from table grapes is usually around 15% sugar by weight. Seedless cultivars now make up the overwhelming majority of table grape plantings. Because grape vines are vegetatively propagatings, by cuttings. The lack of seeds does not present a problem for reproduction. It is an issue for breeders who must either use a seeded variety as the female parent or rescue embryos early in development using tissue culture techniques. There are several sources of the seedlessness trade, and essentially all commercial cultivators get it from one of three sources. Thompson seedless, Russian seedless, and black manuka, all being cultivars of Vitas vinifera.

There are currently more than a dozen varieties of seedless grapes. Several such as Einset seedless, Benjamin Gunnell's prime seedless grapes, Reliance and Venus, have been specifically cultivated for hardness and quality in the relatively cold climates of northeastern United States and southern Ontario. An offset to the improved eating quality of seedlessness is the loss of potential health benefits provided by the enriched phytochemical content of grape seeds. In most of Europe and North America, dried grapes are referred to as raisins, or the local equivalent. In Britain and Ireland, three different varieties are recognized, forcing the EU to use the term

dried vine fruit in official documents. A raisin is any dried grape. While raisin is a French loan word, the word in French refers to the fresh fruit. Grappa, from which the English grape is derived, refers to the bunch. A raisin in French is called dry grape. A currant is a dried zanty black corinth grape.

The name being a corruption of the French Corinth grape. The names of the black and red current, now more usually black current and red current, two berries unrelated to grapes, are derived from misuse. Some other fruits of similar appearance are also so named, for example Australian current, native current, Indian current. A sultana was originally a raisin made from sultan. sultana grapes of Turkish origin, known as Thompson seedless in the United States. But the word is now applied to raisins made from either white grapes or red grapes that are

bleached to resemble the traditional sultana. Grape juice is obtained from crushing and blending grapes into a liquid. The juice is often sold in stores or fermented and made into wine, brandy, or vinegar. Grape juice that has been pasteurized, removing any naturally occurring yeast, will not ferment if kept sterile, and thus contains no alcohol. In the wine industry, grape juice that contains 7 to 23% of pulp, skins, stems, and seeds, is often referred to as must. In North America, the most common grape juice is purple and made from conquered grapes, while white grape juice is commonly made from Niagara grapes, both of which are varieties of Native American grapes, a different species from European wine grapes.

In California, sultana grapes are sometimes diverted from the raisin or table market to produce white juice. Hussram, also known as verjuice, is a type of vinegar made from sour grapes. in the Middle East. It is produced by crushing unripened grapes, collecting and salting the juice, simmering it to remove foam, and then storing it with a layer of olive oil to prevent contamination and oxidation. It is then used as an acidic ingredient in salads and stuffed vegetables. Unripened Hussram grapes send from Ashgolan to Egypt, are made.

mentioned in a 12th century document found in the Chirogeniza. In Iran, a sour grape vinegar is used for making Shirazi salad. Wine making from red and white grape flesh and skins produces substantial quantities of organic residues, collectively called pumice, also mark, which includes crushed skins, seeds, stems, and leaves generally used as compost. Grape pumice, some 10 to 30% of the total mass of grapes crushed,

contains various phytochemicals, such as unfermented sugars, alcohol, polyphenols, tannins, anthocyanins, and numerous other compounds, some of which are harvested and extracted for commercial applications, a process sometimes called valorization of the pumice. Anthocyanins tend to be the main polyphenolics in purple grapes, whereas Flavans 3 OLS are the more abundant class of polyphenols in white varieties. Total finelic content is higher in purple varieties, due almost entirely to anthocyan density in purple grape skin,

compared to absence of anthocyanins and white grape skin. Finaleic content of grape skin varies with cultivar, soil composition, climate, geographic origin, and cultivation practices or exposure to diseases, such as fungal infections. Muscatine grape seeds contain about twice the total polyphenol content of skins. Grape seed oil from crushed seeds is used. used in cosmaceuticals and skin care products. Grape seed oil, including vitamin E and high contents of phytosterols and polyunsaturals and polyunsaturated fatty acids, such as linoleic acid, olayic acid, and alpha

linoleic acid. Resveratrol, a still being compound, is found in widely varying amounts among grape varieties, primarily in their skins and seeds. Muscadine graves have about 100 times higher concentration of still beans and pulp. Fresh grape skin contains about 50 to 100 micrograms of resveratrol per gram. Grape syrup is a condiment made with concentrated grape juice. It is thick and sweet because of its high ratio of sugar to water. Grape syrup is made by boiling grapes,

removing their skins, and squeezing them through a sieve to extract the juice. Like other fruit syrup, a common use of grape syrup is as a topping to sweetcakes, such as pancakes or waffles. It is found in multiple Balkan, Middle Eastern, and Caucasian cuisines under a variety of names. One of the earliest mentions of grape syrup comes from the 5th century BC Greek physician Hippocrates, who refers to Hepsama, the Greek name for the condiment. The 5th century BC Athenian playwright Aristophanes also makes a reference to it, as does Roman-era Greek physician Galen. Grape syrup was known by different names in ancient Roman cuisine,

depending on the boiling procedure. Defrutum, Karenum, and Sappa were reductional. of must. They were made by boiling down grape juice or must in large kettles until it had been reduced to two-thirds of the original volume, karenum, half the original volume, Defrutum, or one-third, sapa. The Greek name for this variant of grape syrup was Cyriam. The main culinary use of de-frutum was to help preserve in Sweden wine. But it was only a very end of grape syrup in Sweden wine. But it was also added to fruit and meat dishes as a sweetening and souring agent. Defrutum was mixed with garum to make the popular condiment onegarum. Quince and melon were preserved

in de Frutum and honey through the winter, and some Roman women used DeFrutum or saupa as a cosmetic. DeFrutum was often used as a food preservative in provisions for Roman troops. In ancient Rome, grape syrup was often boiled in lead pods, which sweetened the syrup through the leaching of the sweet-tasting chemical compound lead acetate into the syrup. A 2009 History Channel documentary produced a patch of historically accurate de Frutum and lead-lined vessels, and tested the liquid, finding a lead level of 29,000 parts per billion, which is 2,900 times higher than contemporary. prairie American drinking water limit of 10 parts per billion. These levels are easily high enough to cause either acute lead toxicity if consumed in large amounts, or chronic lead poisoning, when consumed in smaller quantities over a longer period of time. However, the use of leaden cookware so popular was not the general standard of use. Copper cookware was used far more generally,

and no indication exists as to how often Sapa was added or in what quantity. There is not, however, scholarly agreement on the circumstances and quantity of lead in these ancient Roman condiments. For instance, the original research was done by Jerome Mryagou, but was criticized by John Scarborough, a pharmacologist and classicist, who characterized Riyagu's research as so full of false evidence, miscitations, typographical errors, and a blatant flippancy regarding primary sources that the reader cannot trust the basic arguments.