Organic acids play a primary role in defining grape flavor and wine organoleptic properties. China-originated grape species contain high level acid, which limits to a certain extent, the marketing of fruits and their processing products. The objective of this study is to compare the changes of four organic acids along with grape berry development in cultivars native to China and Europe as well as some hybrids, and to preliminarily ascertain the reason for the high acid concentration in Chinese species. The results indicate that although the variation of titratable acidity during berry development strongly correlates with malic acid, the most significant difference amongst species at harvest lay in the concentration of tartaric acid. The Chinese-type species, V. quinquangularis, V. davidi and V. amurensis, contained higher levels of tartaric acid than European species. But this difference could be narrowed by interspecific hybridization. L-IdnDH, a key enzyme involved in tartaric acid synthesis, presented high homology in amino acid sequence for these species. Grape species with high level of tartaric acid did not have high transcript abundance of L-IdnDH (XM_002267626.2 and NM_001280954.1), but showed a slower decline in L-IdnDH amount during berry development.