Grapes

Grapes, the fruit, and by extension wine. The emoji shows a tight bunch of dark purple grapes, usually topped with a green leaf. It covers both the table grapes you snack on and the wine grapes that end up in a glass, so it turns up in grocery lists, fruit-platter photos and picnic plans as readily as in wine-night invitations and vineyard trips.

Colour does a lot of the work. Grape is the flavour behind most purple sweets, sodas and ice lollies, so 🍇 often means "grape flavour" rather than fresh fruit. It also sits beside 💜 and 🟣 in purple colour themes: a purple outfit, a team in purple, a bio decorated to match.

The vineyard side gives it a season. The grape harvest falls in late summer and autumn in the northern hemisphere, and in wine countries it is an event with its own name (vendimia in Spanish, vendanges in French, vendemmia in Italian), so 🍇 appears with 🍂 and 🍷 then.

What does it mean when someone sends 🍇?

Almost always exactly what it shows. A 🍇 in a chat is a snack, a shopping reminder, a "bring fruit" note or a hint that wine is on the way. Next to 🍷 or 🧀 it promises an evening of wine and cheese; next to 🚐 or 🌄 it is a trip to wine country. On its own it is friendly and neutral, with none of the innuendo that follows 🍑 or 🍆 around, which is why parents, teachers and grandparents use it without a second thought.

Why grapes carry more culture than most fruit

Grapes are one of the oldest cultivated fruits, mainly because of wine. People have grown vines for thousands of years around the Mediterranean and the Caucasus, and most of the world's grapes still go into wine rather than fruit bowls. The ancient Greeks gave wine its own god, Dionysus (Bacchus to the Romans), shown crowned with vine leaves and grapes, and bunches of grapes decorate Jewish, Christian and Islamic art as a sign of plenty; in Christianity the vine and the cup of wine are central images of the faith.

The fruit also carries rituals. In Spain, and now across much of Latin America, people eat twelve grapes at midnight on New Year's Eve, one with each chime of the clock, for luck in each month ahead. In Japan grapes are a prestige fruit: large Kyoho grapes and green Shine Muscat are grown to perfection and given as gifts, and picking your own at a vineyard is a popular autumn outing. Dried, grapes become raisins, sultanas and currants; Turkey and the United States are among the biggest raisin producers.