Why Doesn't Artificial Grape Flavor Taste Like Grapes?

You may have noticed that when you eat a grape, it doesn’t taste like grape-flavored soda or grape-flavored candy? The green grapes or red seedless grapes we commonly consume taste nothing like a Grape Jolly Rancher or a Nehi soda. So, where did this flavor come from? Why doesn’t artificial grape flavor taste like grapes, even though it’s used to flavor grape-flavored products? The answer is that it does taste like grapes: Concord grapes!

Concord grapes, basis of artificial grape flavor

This is not the first such question I’ve answered. Many ask the same thing about artificial banana flavor.

🍇Artificial Grape Flavor: Quick Answer Guide

Experience vs. Reality: Most people’s idea of “grape” comes from Concord grapes, which taste radically different from common green or red table grapes.

The Perfume Connection: Methyl anthranilate (the core of grape flavor) was used in perfumes and isolated from orange blossoms decades before it was discovered in grapes.

The “Foxy” Factor: American “foxy” grapes like the Concord naturally contain high levels of this compound, creating that signature “grapey” profile.

The Medicine Association: Because this compound was used for decades to mask the taste of liquid vitamins and cough syrups, many people now associate it with medicine rather than fruit.

The Verdict: Artificial grape flavor does taste like real grapes—it just specifically mimics the Concord variety used in juice and jelly.

What is Artificial Grape Flavor?

What we know as artificial grape flavor is a chemical called methyl anthranilate. The discovery of this compound had nothing, initially, to do with grapes. It’s true history was long and winding, with some surprising twists!

There is a misconception that guys in lab coats have, for decades, been laboring in secret to reproduce the natural world in chemicals. In many cases, a synthetic flavoring was meant to simply produce a desired effect in a certain product or produce a passable flavor for some medicine, etc.

🍌 Don’t Stop at Grapes!

Think the grape mystery is strange? Wait until you hear the truth about artificial banana flavor. While many believe the flavor comes from an extinct species of banana, the real story involves a “discovery gap” almost identical to the one that gave us grape soda. Read: Why doesn’t banana flavoring taste exactly like bananas?

The Science of “Foxy” Flavor: Methyl Anthranilate

Methyl anthranilate was identified as early as the 1890s as a major component of neroli, the name given to the essential oil of orange blossoms. In other words, what we know as artificial grape flavor wasn’t even isolated from grapes, but from orange blossoms. It was used in perfumes for decades before ever being applied to beverages, candies, etc. Its first major use after being synthesized was as an artificial orange blossom scent or “artificial neroli oil.” ¹

This compound was also known to be present in jasmine, orange lime oil, and orange pea oil as early as 1900.

The same chemical is present in other nice-smelling things like gardenia, bergamot (the flavor in Earl Grey Tea), oranges, strawberries, etc., although its presence in fruits wasn’t known until later.

Rather than isolating this and other chemicals from foods and using them as flavorants in products, which was much too difficult and inexact, those looking to flavor foods got their essential oils and other ingredients from perfumeries, which had already been isolating and producing these oils for decades. So, methyl anthranilate was a perfume ingredient that eventually found its way into beverage and food products. ²

Methyl anthranilate is also used along with ethyl acetate and ethyl butyrate as an apple flavor.

Grape Flavor Was Used BEFORE It Was Known To Occur in Grapes

Again, methyl anthranilate was isolated from orange blossoms and sold as a perfume ingredient for many years before it began to be used as a flavoring. At some point, it began to find its way into flavoring mixes for other things; grape soda, candy, or anything grape-flavored. It was also used in banana, orange, and pineapple flavorings.

When this chemical was first being used to flavor grape-flavored products, it had not even been isolated from a grape. Again, this was a difficult business. ³

The Challenge of Isolating Natural Flavor Compounds

Another common misconception is that the chemicals used in artificial flavors are present in gargantuan amounts. While they may be the major flavor component in a certain fruit or other food, they are usually present only in trace amounts. It’s just that we can smell or taste them very well in trace amounts, and other chemicals that also contribute to flavor are present in even smaller amounts.

The point is that isolating these chemicals was not always so easy in the past. So, it took a while before anyone found out that methyl anthranilate was present in grapes, but not in just any grapes.

The Concord Grape Connection

You may have never eaten a Concord grape but you may have grown up on grape jelly and grape juice. Probably Welch’s. Both Welch’s Grape Juice and Welch’s Grape Jelly are from Concord grapes.

Concords are an American grape, a descendant of the Vitis labrusca species that grew uncultivated in New England in the early 1800s. These are the so-called ‘Foxy’ grapes, a term used to describe the earthy, musky, and sweet smell of these grapes. These grapes have thick skins that slip off the flesh without crushing it. They have a lot of aroma and flavor but have large seeds and tough skin.

The Concord grape has a rich history in America, beginning in 1849 when Ephraim Wales Bull, a farmer from Concord, Massachusetts, planted over 22,000 seeds from wild native grapes. He experimented with his plantings for years and finally discovered what he thought was the perfect grape. His ‘Concord grape’ was hardy and flavorful, able to thrive in the harsh New England climate. It quickly gained favor among the public and its versatility led to its widespread use in products, including the iconic Welch’s grape juice.

Can you pronounce it? Methyl anthranilate may be one of those ingredients that’s tough to pronounce. No matter, it usually shows up as “artificial flavor” on ingredient labels. Then again, if you saw the chemical components of a piece of fruit, then food writers like Michael Pollan would have to rethink his “back to the garden” stance! Read more about The Chemistry of Food: Moving Beyond the “Unpronounceable” Myth

Dr. Welch and the Birth of the Grape Juice Industry

Concord grape juice was developed in 1869 by Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch. The difference in his juice is that it did not ferment due to the pasteurization process, in addition to being very sweet and tasty. It was Welch’s grape juice that, indeed, made the grape juice industry what it is today, and the Concord grape is synonymous with grape juice in America, not to mention its use in many other products, including jams, jellies, and even wine.

A “Grapey” Misunderstanding

Now that we’ve established one, where artificial grape flavor came from, and two, the importance of Concord grapes and especially Concord grape juice, we can move on to the interesting part of the story.

While the grape juice industry was becoming a thing, so were products flavored with methyl anthranilate. By the late 1800s, neroli oil was being mass-produced synthetically from coal byproducts. By 1921, the first artificially flavored grape sodas were being marketed. Nu Grape, created in 1906 in Bremen, Georgia by pharmacist John Mangaham was being bottled and sold by 1921. Grapico grape soda was introduced in 1914. The first artificially grape-flavored candies were soon to follow. Jolly Ranchers Grape Candies were introduced in 1949.

Interestingly, perhaps the most successful grape soda of its time, Grapette, introduced in 1939, was flavored with almost pure grape juice.

The point is that very grapey-tasting grape juice was a thing, and very grapey-tasting grape sodas and other products were a thing. You now know that people who think artificial grape flavor ‘doesn’t taste like grapes’ have never tasted Concord grapes.

These artificially flavored products, according to the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, had to clearly state that they contained artificial flavoring. Failure to do so would constitute consumer fraud.

You won’t find methyl anthranilate in those old-world fancy-pants Vitis vinifera from Europe. But you will find it in the “Foxy” grapes of the New World. And Concord grape, foxy grapes if there ever were any, are loaded with the stuff. That did pose a problem. Funnily enough, it had not occurred to everyone that you might find this ‘grape-tasting’ chemical in actual grapes.

🍦 Is Your Vanilla Made of Wood or Oil?

Think the history of grape flavor is wild? You won’t believe where imitation vanilla actually comes from. From 19th-century paper mill waste to modern petroleum synthesis, the “fake” stuff has a scientific backstory that is surprisingly clean—and much weirder than the beaver gland rumors suggest. Read: Does Imitation Vanilla Contain Petroleum or Paper Mill Waste?

When Grape Juice Tasted “Too Grapey” for the Government

To enforce the law, regulators had to analyze products and prove whether they might contain an unannounced artificial flavor. Lo and behold, they found methy anthralinate present in Concord grape juice. Conclusion? Grape juice must be adulterated with artificial flavor! Concord grape juice, ironically, tasted too ‘grapey.’ ⁴

Regardless, the back-room boys at the Bureau of Chemistry did figure out that actual grapes, at least those of the foxy variety, contained high concentrations of methyl anthranilate, Concord grapes being the champ.

This is not to say that the government wasn’t correct in its belief that grape juice products might be adulterated.

Cracking Down on Early Flavor Fraud

For instance, in 1921, a judgment was entered against Tropical Juice Co. of Chicago, Illinois, regarding their grape juice concentrate product called “Grape Smash Flavored Concentrate Acidulated and Artificially Colored.” The company claimed that this product was derived from grapes. The Bureau of Chemistry had found that this product was “essentially a mixture of sugar syrup and tartaric acid, flavored with methyl anthranilate and artificially colored with a coal dye, amaranth.”

After this, however, during the years 1921 to 1923, the Bureau of Chemistry found few problems with grape juice products falling within its purview, while flavoring syrups and concentrates presented the biggest problem. Syrups bound for soda shops, for example, often claimed to contain grape juice but actually contained grape color and artificial grape flavor.

The Bureau had been unable to act before 1922 because it lacked an exact method of determining the amount of methyl anthranilate a product contained. Once they gained this ability, many products were seized. To be clear, grape products were not the only ones plagued by this kind of fraud.

Conclusion: The “Foxy” Truth Behind the Label

And, with that, we have our answer to the decidedly internet-age question of why artificial grape flavor doesn’t taste like grapes. It does, it tastes like Concord grapes and other Foxy grapes.

This leads many to conclude that artificial grape flavor, or methyl anthranilate, was “isolated from grapes.” Not only is this untrue, but the product was around long before anyone knew that grapes contained it!

Grape flavor, originally, was not associated with actual grapes, but since it tasted like the most familiar grapes in the New World, Concord Grapes, it was a natural choice for grape-flavored products. Those who did not grow up drinking Welch’s grape juice may find that these chemically flavored products, like grape soda, do not taste like the table grapes they usually eat.

So, the mystery of why artificial grape flavor feels so disconnected from our modern fruit bowls isn’t a failure of science, but a quirk of history. The methyl anthranilate we recognize today as “fake” was actually the very compounds that chemists found in abundance inside the American Concord grape.

If it weren’t for the rise of the Concord grape and the highly successful marketing of its juice, would Americans have accepted artificial grape flavor as being quintessentially grapey? Perhaps, due to familiarity with the other Foxy varieties, like the Catawba, Niagara, or Delaware. Or, perhaps not.

Some people now may have a different flavor perception of grapes due to their lifelong experience with eating grapes, but there are still many who associate ‘grapeness’ with concord grapes and grew up on artificially flavored Grape Nehi, grape jelly, and grape juice (all Concord).

Whether you view that signature punch as a nostalgic childhood treat or a reminder of a liquid vitamin dose, it remains one of the most honest “artificial” flavors in your pantry. It doesn’t taste like a red table grape because it was never meant to; it instead resembles the bold flavor of the Concord, a fruit that defined the American palate long before the first soda was ever bottled.

Many thanks to Nadia Berenstein, who provided many of the facts that helped kick off this Food History/Science deep dive.

The Science of Flavor: A CulinaryLore Series

If you enjoyed this deep dive into the “foxy” history of grapes, don’t miss my other investigations into the strange origins of common flavors:

The Banana Paradox: Why your candy tastes like a banana that (mostly) no longer exists.
The Vanilla Secret: Debunking the rumors about petroleum and beaver glands in your extract.
Raspberry & The Beaver: Separating viral internet myths from actual food science.