The grapes of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

The first Secretary of the Colony, William Strachey, was somewhat fulsome in his praise of the new found fruit. Writing[48] in 1610, he says that the vines burden every bush, climb to the top of the highest trees and are always full of clusters of grapes though never pruned or manured. He declares that the grapes are as good as those to be found between Paris and Amiens and that the wine made by the settlers from the wild grapes was equal to French or British wine, “being strong and headdy.” In closing his description he states that by art and industry skillful vignerons could bring viticulture unto such perfection as will enable the colony to export wine to the mother country.

An anonymous writer in 1649, who sets out to give a “full and true relation of the present state of the plantations, their health, peace and plenty,” etc., etc., thought that the colony needed only some one to set an example to the ordinary settlers to induce them to grow grapes. This writer says: “Vines in abundance and variety, do grow naturally over all the land, but by the birds and beasts, most devoured before they come to perfection and ripenesse; but this testifies and declares, That the Ground, and the Climate is most proper, and the Commodity of Wine is not a contemptible Merchandize; but some men of worth and estate must give in these things example to the inferior inhabitants and ordinary sort of men, to shew them the gain and Commodity by it, which they will not believe but by experience before their faces:”[49]

A hundred years later, according to Beverly, the grape was scarcely cultivated, the masses of the people being content with the fruit of the wild vines which grew everywhere in the forest. So far as is known there were in Beverly’s time, 1722, no named varieties and there had been no efforts to improve the wild grapes in any way. There are no indications from the early writings to show that the Virginian settlers even knew how to propagate grapes. The reason for this neglect is largely to be sought for in the last sentence in the subjoined footnote from Beverly.[50] This neglect was in spite of the fact that from the first the settlers had noted that when the vines were open to the sun the crop was improved.

In the northern colonies, as in Virginia, about the first object to attract the attention of the early settlers was the wild grape. The grape, possibly more than any other natural product of the soil, is mentioned in the preliminary surveys of the Atlantic Coast as offering reasonable ground for the expectation that American soils would furnish all of the supplies necessary for the sustenance and comfort of settlers. A few statements from the early explorers and visitors in the Middle and New England States will serve to show how plentiful wild grapes were in these regions and the estimation in which they were held.

In Delaware, Beauchamp Plantagenet, describing a “Uvedale under Websneck,” in his account of New Albion, says that it contains “four sorts of excellent great vines running on mulberry and sassafras trees; there are four sorts of grapes, the first is the Thoulouse Muscat, sweet scented, the second the great fox and thick grape, after five months reaped being boiled and salted, and well fined, it is a strong red Xeres; the third a light Claret, the fourth a white grape creeps on the land, maketh a pure gold color white wine; Tenis Pale, the Frenchman, of these four made eight sorts of excellent wine, and of the Muscat acute boiled that the second draught will fox[51] a reasonable pate four months old: and here may be gathered and made two hundred ton in the vintage month, and replanted will mend.”

In New England the seventeenth century notices of the wild grape are even more numerous than similar records to the south but they are briefer and the northern observer did not recognize the possibilities of their domestic use and of bringing them under cultivation. This seeming neglect of the Puritans was not because the northern wild grapes are inferior to those of Virginia and the Carolinas, but more likely because of the social and industrial conditions of the colonists. The richer planters in the South had time for wine-making, the only purpose for which grapes were then grown, and for growing the grapes. The New Englanders had to struggle for the necessities of life.

It is significant, too, that the Southerners were fond of wine, and imported Madeira in large quantities. In New England, rum seems to have been preferred to wine, and as its manufacture from molasses is very simple and the latter was to be had from the West Indies at small cost, wine-making and grape-growing received small attention.

Yet nearly all of the writers on the resources of the New England Colonies mentioned grapes. Thus Governor Edward Winslow writing in 1621 of the country in which the Puritans had found a home says: “here are grapes, white and red, and very sweet and strong also.” We have seen that Winthrop was so impressed with the possibility of grape-growing in the new colony that he secured a grant of Governor’s Island in Boston Harbor upon which to plant a vineyard. In Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan is found the best account of the wild grapes of New England as the Puritan found them. He says:[52] “Vines, of this kinde of trees, there are that beare grapes of three colours, that is to say: white, black, and red.

“The Country is so apt for vines, that (but for the fire at the spring of the yeare) the vines would so over spreade the land, that one should not be able to passe for them, the fruit is as bigg of some as a musket bullet, and is excellent in taste.”

John Josselyn in New England’s Rarities, speaks of a grape having “a taste of gunpowder,” a short but vivid description of Vitis labrusca.[53] William Wood in New England’s Prospect gives still another account of the grapes of New England.[54]