The grapes of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

Viticulture took its place in the literature of American pomology with the advent of William Robert Prince’s A Treatise on the Vine. This work, magnificent compared with similar books of the time, introduces native grapes to the fruit-growers of America. Prince was the fourth proprietor of the same name of the Prince nurseries at Flushing, Long Island, and he with his predecessors had assiduously cultivated European varieties of grapes hoping to acclimatize them to American conditions. It is not a matter of wonder therefore, that much of his book is devoted to foreign grapes. His collection at Flushing consisted of over four hundred and fifty sorts and many of these he describes. In spite of his attraction to the foreign varieties, some of which had been tested in his nursery for two or three generations, Prince admitted the impossibility of growing them successfully and recommends to his readers and patrons the cultivation of native varieties. In the latter regard he says: “* * * after all my own experiments I have come to this conclusion, that to establish vineyards of the most profitable description, with a certainty of regular crops in localities north of the highlands in this state, native varieties alone should be selected; and the whole of the eastern states will of course be comprised in this remark.”

In his treatise, Prince described about seventy varieties of native grapes and several of the native species. Prince’s descriptions of these grapes are comprehensive and judging from the sorts described by him which we now have they are accurate. He grew seedlings from many of them. He showed a knowledge of the possibilities of hybridization of American species with Vitis vinifera. He solicited and obtained seeds and vines from all the settled portions of the Union. His grape correspondents in different parts of America and of the world must have numbered hundreds. Prince’s enthusiasm and perseverance in grape culture attached to him votaries in all fruit regions and to him more than to any other man was due that friendly interchange of knowledge and sentiment regarding grapes which characterized the half century after the appearance of his book. Such co-operation as was manifested in grape-growing in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century has never been known in the culture of any other species of plant in this country and to it is largely due the progress of viticulture in leaps and bounds dating from Prince’s time.

With the close of the year 1830, we may consider viticulture a firmly established industry in America with the native grapes as a basis. Rafinesque’s estimate of the acreage at this time is given on a preceding page (47). It is worth while considering, very briefly, the types of grapes under cultivation at this stage of the industry, with some discussion of the origin of the leading varieties.

The first grape to become generally distributed as a commercial variety, was, as has been remarked before, the Alexander, or Cape. It came into prominence, through the deception of Legaux and the credulity of Dufour, as one of the Viniferas commonly grown at the Cape of Good Hope. It proved, however, to be an offshoot of the fox grape of the woods, Vitis labrusca, and had been grown, long before Legaux palmed it off as the Cape, under the names Alexander and Tasker’s, Alexander because of its having been grown by a gardener of this name and Tasker’s through its cultivation on a somewhat extensive scale by a Mr. Tasker in Maryland. Its history dates back to the years before the Revolutionary War and its origin was probably on the banks of the Schuylkill in Pennsylvania, hence another of its many synonyms, Schuylkill Muscadell.

Of the several other native varieties of the Labrusca type cultivated in 1830, two deserve attention for their intrinsic and historical value. The Catawba, of uncertain origin, as we shall see in its history, and the Isabella, a native of South Carolina, are both classed by most viticulturists as of the fox or Labrusca type. The two varieties were distributed among vine-growers at about the same time but the Catawba, because of its superior merits, soon took the lead and at the time of which we write was by far the most popular native grape. These, with the Alexander, may certainly be considered the forerunners of the cultivated grapes of the species to which they belong. The Catawba is still in several great grape regions of the country the standard commercial variety.

While varieties of Vitis labrusca were first cultivated in the North, it is probable that Vitis rotundifolia furnished the first domesticated varieties for the South, and likely, too, before the northern kinds were cultivated. Among these are the white and black Scuppernongs, or bullet grapes. Vitis rotundifolia, while it refuses to grow out of its habitat, runs riot from Maryland to Florida from seashore to mountains and in many diverse soils. The Scuppernongs[72] are natural offshoots of this species and are known in the South in legend, tradition and history. Undoubtedly they were cultivated for their fruit or as ornamentals in garden or vineyards from the earliest colonial times. It is certain that wine was made from the different wild types of Vitis rotundifolia from the settlement of Jamestown and if not brought under cultivation at an early day it was because the bountifulness of the wild vines obviated the necessity of domesticating them. It was of this grape that Amadas and Barlowe wrote in 1584 “in all the world the like abundance is not to be found.”

The word Scuppernong[73] is often used to designate a group of grapes rather than as a varietal name; for, there are the black Scuppernong, the white or green Scuppernong and the red Scuppernong, all much alike except in color of fruit and in a few minor characters of vine. Indeed, where Vitis rotundifolia grows wild, all of the forms are often included in the term Scuppernong. The species is often known, too, as the Muscadine or Southern Muscadine.

While the Labruscas were becoming established in the North and the Scuppernongs in the South, two other species, one northern and one southern, came into prominence with varieties which for wine-making at least were far superior to any other native sorts. The southern species is Vitis aestivalis, best represented then and now by Norton while the northern species is Vitis riparia and its variety under cultivation was the Clinton, which still remains one of the best representatives of the species.[74] It is strange that these four species were brought under cultivation only when wild forms of them, so striking in value that they still remain a hundred years later standard cultivated varieties, had been found. Vitis labrusca represented by Catawba, Vitis rotundifolia, by Scuppernong, Vitis aestivalis, by Norton, and Vitis riparia, by Clinton, are, after a century of improvement, with several hundred varieties, scarcely excelled by others of their species. Yet it is not so much the wonder that grape-breeders have so little improved upon these first varieties, as that our forefathers could allow them to grow comparatively neglected at their doors for two centuries while they wasted time in the attempt to grow a foreign grape that had been a failure from the very start.

Other species had also been tried at this time. Those indefatigable botanists and horticulturists, the Princes, had grown plants of what we now know as Vitis aestivalis lincecumii Munson, Vitis longii Prince, and Vitis cordifolia Michx., but without finding them of value. It is interesting to note that the first named species, the Post-oak grape, now promises to furnish valuable varieties for the South and that it has some characters desirable for the North if they can be combined with those of our northern species.

We have followed the grape through the settlement, colonization and first statehood days of the United States. We have seen that it had its part, and no mean one, in these dramatic periods. We have found that the wild grapes of the country, valued but uncultivated for two hundred years, became through mere transplanting from the woods into the vineyards, without the slow modifications which nearly all other plants have had to undergo, one of our most important fruits. The domestication of four species of American grapes has been briefly traced. The beginning of American viticulture has been set, somewhat arbitrarily, at 1830, the date of the publication of William Prince’s Treatise on the Vine. It remains now to discuss the economic progress of the industry we have seen launched.