The grapes of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

The English were the first to plant the Old World grape in the territory in which this species fails because of the attacks of native parasites. Lord Delaware seems to have been the original promoter of grape-growing in the New World. In 1616 he wrote to the London Company urging the culture of the grape as a possible source of revenue for the new colony.[6] His letter seems to have been convincing, for it is on record that the Company in 1619 sent a number of French vine-dressers and a collection of the best varieties of the grapes of France to Virginia. The Colonial Assembly showed quite as much solicitude in encouraging the cultivation of the vine as did the Company in London. The year of the importation of vines and vine-dressers, 1619, the Assembly passed an act compelling every householder to plant ten cuttings and to protect them from injury and stated that the landowners were expected to acquire the art of dressing a vineyard, either through instruction or by observation. The Company, to increase the interest in vine-growing, showed marked favors to all who undertook it with zealousness; promises of servants, the most valuable gifts that could be made to the colonists, were frequent. Under the impulse thus given vineyards were planted containing as many as ten thousand vines.[7]

In spite of a rich soil, congenial climate, and skilled vine-dressers, nothing of importance came from the venture, some of the historians of the time attributing the failure to the massacre of 1622; others to poor management of the vines; and still others to disagreements between the English and their French vine-dressers, who, it was claimed, concealed their knowledge because they worked as slaves. It is probable that the latter explanation was fanciful but the former must have been real for we are told that the farms and outlying settlements were abandoned after the great massacre. But the colony could hardly have recovered from the ravages of the Indians before efforts to force the colonists to grow grapes were again made; for in 1623 the Assembly passed a law that for every four men in the colony a garden should be laid off a part of which was to be planted to vines.[8]

In 1639 the Assembly again tried to encourage vine-growing by legislative enactment, this time with an act giving a premium to successful grape-growers.[9] Later, about 1660, a premium of ten thousand pounds of tobacco was offered in Virginia for each “two tunne of wine” from grapes raised in the colony. Shortly after, some wine was exported to England but whether made from wild plants or cultivated ones does not appear. In spite of the encouragement of legislative acts, grape-growing did not flourish in Virginia.[10] The fact that tobacco was a paying crop and more easily grown than the grape may have had something to do with the failure to grow the latter. Or it may have been that the cheapness of Madeira, “a noble strong drink,” as one of the Colonial historians puts it, had a depressing influence on the industry. But still more likely, the foreign plants did not thrive.

Encouragement of the home production of wine did not cease in Virginia for at least one hundred and fifty years; for in 1769 an enactment of the Assembly was passed to encourage wine-making in favor of one Andrew Estave, a Frenchman. As a result of the act of this time, land was purchased, buildings erected, and slaves and workmen with a complete outfit for wine-making were furnished Estave. The act provided that if he made within six years ten hogsheads of merchantable wine—land, houses, slaves, the whole plant was to be given to him. It is stated that this unusual subsidy is made “as a reward for so useful an improvement.” Estave succeeded in making the wine but it was poor stuff and he had difficulty in getting the authorities to turn over the property which was to be his reward. This was finally done by an act of the Assembly, however, the failure to make good wine being attributed by all parties to the “unfitness of the land.”

An attempt was made to cultivate the European grape in Virginia early in the eighteenth century on an extensive scale. Soon after taking office as governor in 1710, Alexander Spotswood brought over a colony of Germans from the Rhine and settled them in Spottsylvania County on the Rapidan river. The site of their village on this river is now marked by a ford, Germania Ford, a name which is a record of the settlement. That they grew grapes and made wine is certain, for the Governor’s “red and white Rapidan, made by his Spottsylvania Germans” is several times mentioned in the published journals and letters of the time. But the venture did not make a deep nor lasting impress on the agriculture of the colony.[11]

Several early attempts were made in the Carolinas and Georgia to grow the Vinifera grape. It was thought, in particular, that the French Huguenots who settled in these states in large numbers toward the close of the seventeenth century would succeed in grape-growing but even these skilled vine-growers failed. Their failures are recorded by Alexander Hewitt in 1779 as follows: “European grapes have been transplanted, and several attempts made to raise wine; but so overshaded are the vines planted in the woods, and so foggy is the season of the year when they ripen, that they seldom come to maturity, but as excellent grapes have been raised in gardens where they are exposed to the sun, we are apt to believe that proper methods have not been taken for encouraging that branch of agriculture, considering its great importance in a national view.” In Georgia, Abraham De Lyon, encouraged by the authorities of the colony, imported vines from Portugal and planted them at Savannah early in the eighteenth century but his attempt, though carried out on a small scale in a garden, soon failed.

In Maryland, if the records are correct, a greater degree of success was attained than in the states to the south. Lord Charles Baltimore, son of the grantee of the territory, in 1662 planted three hundred acres of land in St. Mary’s to vines. It is certain that he made and sold wine in considerable quantities and the old chroniclers report that it was as good as the best Burgundy. Efforts to grow the European grape in Maryland continued until as late as 1828 when the Maryland Society for Promoting the Culture of the Vine was incorporated by the State Legislature.[12] The object of the Society was to “carry on experiments in the cultivation of both the European and native grapes and to collect and disseminate all possible information upon this interesting subject.” The organization was in existence for several years and through its exertions practically all of the native sorts were tried in or about Baltimore as well as many seedlings. Besides the achievements of the Society as a body, their Secretary reports in 1831 that, through the individual efforts of its members, there were then under cultivation near the city of Baltimore several vineyards of from three to ten acres each and a great number of smaller ones. This was several years after the introduction of the Catawba and Isabella for which grape-growers in other parts of the United States had largely given up the Vinifera sorts. Seemingly in every part of the Union the grape of the Old World was tried, not once only, but time and again before its culture could be given up.

The Swedes made some attempts at an early day to grow grapes on the Delaware. Queen Christina instructed John Printz, governor of New Sweden, to encourage the “culture of the vine” and to give the industry his personal attention. Later when New Sweden had become a part of Pennsylvania, William Penn encouraged vine-growing by importing cuttings of French and Spanish vines; and several experimental vineyards were set out in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, but all efforts to establish bearing plantations came to naught. Penn’s interest in grape-growing seems to have been greatly stimulated by wine made by a friend of his from native grapes which grew about Germantown.

There are no detailed accounts of grape-growing by the Dutch of New York but the following taken from the writings of Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, two Hollanders who visited New York in 1679, soon after the English took possession of New Netherland, indicates that there had been attempts to cultivate grapes.[13] “I went along the shore to Coney Island, which is separated from Long Island only by a creek, and around the point, and came inside not far from a village called Gravesant, and again home. We discovered on the roads several kinds of grapes still on the vines, called speck (pork) grapes, which are not always good, and these were not; although they were sweet in the mouth at first, they made it disagreeable and stinking. The small blue grapes are better, and their vines grow in good form. Although they have several times attempted to plant vineyards, and have not immediately succeeded, they, nevertheless, have not abandoned the hope of doing so by and by, for there is always some encouragement, although they have not, as yet, discovered the cause of the failure.” The “speck” grape was without question Vitis labrusca and the small blue grape was probably Vitis riparia.

Thirty years before the visit of Dankers and Sluyter the people of New Netherland addressed a remonstrance to the home government regarding certain abuses in the colony. This document[14] is headed with a chapter on the productions of New Netherland in which the wild grapes are mentioned and their cultivation is suggested. “Almost the whole country, as well the forest as the maize lands and flats, is full of vines, but principally—as if they had been planted there—around and along the banks of the brooks, streams and rivers which course and flow in abundance very conveniently and agreeably all through the land. The grapes are of many varieties; some white, some blue, some very fleshy and fit only to make raisins of; some again are juicy, some very large, others on the contrary small; their juice is pleasant and some of it white, like French or Rhenish Wine; that of others, again, a very deep red, like Tent; some even paler; the vines run far up the trees and are shaded by their leaves, so that the grapes are slow in ripening and a little sour, but were cultivation and knowledge applied here, doubtless as fine Wines would then be made as in any other wine growing countries.”