The grapes of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

In the history of Vinland, or more properly Wineland, we find the first record of American grapes.[39] Biarni Heriulfsson, a Norseman, while making a voyage from Iceland to Greenland, 986 A. D., was driven by a storm to the coast of New England but did not touch land. Leif the Lucky, son of Eric the Red, about 1000 A. D., visited the country discovered by Biarni. One of Leif’s men, Tyrker, a German who “was born where there is no lack of either grapes or vines,” discovered grapes, whereupon Leif named the country “Wineland.” Other Norsemen in at least two expeditions visited Wineland, supposed to be a part of Rhode Island or Massachusetts, and for centuries after, the land discovered by Leif the Lucky was known in Icelandic literature as “Wineland the Good.” The first European to touch the New World christened it after its grapes.

The next record we have of American grapes comes from an Englishman, one Captain John Hawkins, who visited the Spanish settlements in Florida in 1565.[40] In his account of the colony he speaks of the wild grapes, comparing them, as did all the early explorers, with those of Europe. He indicates further that the Spaniards had discovered the value of the wild grape for domestic purposes and says that they had made twenty hogsheads of wine in a single season. It is almost certain that this grape was Vitis rotundifolia, best represented by the Scuppernong, which is commonly found on the Atlantic sea-coast from Maryland to Florida.

The first English colonists, like the Norsemen, declared the new-found world to be a natural vineyard. Amadas and Barlowe, sent out by Raleigh in 1584, described the land[41] “so full of grapes as the very beating and surge of the sea overflowed them, of which we found such plenty, as well there as in all places else, both on the sand and on the green soil, on the hills as on the plains, as well as on every little shrub as also climbing towards the top of high cedars, that I think in all the world the like abundance is not to be found.”

Ralph Lane, in a subsequent expedition of Raleigh’s, in a letter to Hakluyt, pronounced the grapes of Virginia to be larger than those of France, Spain or Italy.[42]

The region described by Amadas and Barlowe is that of the two great sounds, Albemarle and Pamlico, on the coast of North Carolina and more specifically Roanoke Island. It was to this place that Raleigh sent his expeditions, with one of which Amadas and Barlowe were connected, and established the earliest colony of Englishmen in the New World. The first home of Europeans in America was in Vinland, named for its grapes. The first home of Englishmen was on Roanoke Island, “so full of grapes that the very sea overflowed them.”

A few years later, Thomas Hariot, in a description of Virginia which must have done much to decide the English as to the advisability of establishing colonies in America, gave a detailed account of the merchantable commodities the new countries afforded. Among these he mentions grapes which he describes as being of two kinds that the soil yields naturally and abundantly, of which one was small and sour and of the bigness of the European grape while the other was of greater size and more sweet and luscious. Hariot concludes his description with the statement that “when they are planted and husbanded as they ought, a principal commodity of wine may be raised.”[43]

Of the later accounts given of grapes in Virginia and the Carolinas by the colonizers and adventurers of the seventeenth century there are so many that it is impossible to present all and difficult to sort out those most apt. A few more may be given:

Captain John Smith, soldier, colonizer and Virginian planter, writing in 1606 describes two sorts of wild grapes. He says:[44] “Of vines great abundance in many parts that climbe the toppes of highest trees in some places, but these beare but few grapes. Except by the rivers and savage habitations, where they are not overshadowed from the sunne, they are covered with fruit, though never pruined nor manured. Of those hedge grapes we made neere twentie gallons of wine, which was like our French Brittish wine, but certainely they would prove good were they well manured. There is another sort of grape neere as great as a Cherry, this they [Indians] call Messamins, they be fatte, and the juyce thicke. Neither doth the taste so well please when they are made in wine.”

It is worthy of remark that the first English colonist in the New World noticed that the vines in the vicinity of the Indian habitations and along the edges of creeks, rivers and swamps, where not overshadowed from the sun, were covered with fruit. The statement of this fact, coupled with the one following, “but certainely they would prove good were they well manured,” indicates that the possibility of successful cultivation of the wild grapes was considered at this early time. In fact, as we have seen, Lord Delaware at once sought to test the virtues of the native grapes by bringing over a number of French vine-dressers, who not only planted cuttings imported from Europe but proceeded at once to transplant the vine of the country.[45] A few years later, according to Bruce, Sir Thomas Dale “established a vineyard at Henrico not long after the foundation of that settlement, covering an area of three acres, in which he planted the vines of the native grape for the purpose of testing their adaptability to the production of wines that could be substituted for those of France and Spain.”[46]

Francis Maguel, who visited Virginia in 1609, stated that the wine made in the colony reminded him of the Alicante which he had drunk in Spain.[47]