The grapes of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

Nicolls, the first English governor of New York, greatly desired to grow the vine for wine-making. In 1664 he granted Paul Richards a monopoly of the industry for the colony stipulating that he could make and sell wines free of impost and gave him the right to tax any person planting vines in the colony five shillings per acre.[15] Richards lived in the city of New York but his vineyard, as indicated in the grant, was located on Long Island. It may be assumed that this was the first attempt to grow grapes commercially in the State of New York. It would seem that the governor by granting a monopoly of the grape and wine industry took the surest means of killing the infant industry. The Earl of Bellomont, a later governor of the Colony, wrote to London with assurances of a great future of viticulture in the Colony.[16] For over a century after, there were spasmodic efforts to grow the Old World grape in and about New York City, and at the beginning of the Revolutionary War there were a few small vineyards and some wine-making on Manhattan Island.

There were many attempts to grow foreign grapes in New England. John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, had planted a vineyard in one of the islands, known as “Governor’s Garden,” in Boston Harbor before 1630. Vine-planters were sent to this colony in 1629.[17] There were plantations at the mouth of the Piscataqua in Maine as early or before Winthrop’s plantings were made. In granting a charter to Rhode Island in 1663, Charles II sought to encourage viticulture in that State by offering liberal inducements to colonists who would grow grapes and make wine.[18] But if grapes were grown, or wine made from the foreign grape, no great degree of success was attained. Wine was made in plenty from the wild grapes in all of the New England colonies so that it was not because of Puritanical prejudices against wine that the grapes were not grown. The glowing terms in which travelers returning to England spoke of the native grapes and of the wine from them undoubtedly stimulated those founding the colonies to make every effort to introduce the cultivated grape even though the cold, bleak climate and thin soils of this northern region were inhospitable to a plant which thrives best in the sunny southern portions of Europe.

In only one of the states east of the Rockies is grape-growing recorded to have gained even a foothold before the introduction of varieties of native grapes. In this instance there is much doubt as to whether the varieties grown were pure-bred Vitis vinifera. Louisiana, while owned by France, grew grapes and made wine in such quantities, and the wine was of such high quality, so several of the old chroniclers say, that the French government forbade grape-growing in the colony. Since the wine-making was in the hands of the Jesuits who had learned the art in Europe, and since there were no cultivated varieties of native grapes at that time of which there is record, the presumption among the early writers was that these vineyards were of European grapes. Louisiana, however, was a vast and undefined region and it is not known where these oft-mentioned vineyards were located. It is probable in the light of what we now know that these Louisiana Jesuits made wine from native grapes either wild or cultivated.

The time covered so far is the two hundred years in which America was being colonized. We have seen that all of our European forefathers brought with them a love of the vine, or more correctly, a love of wine, and that throughout the period many experiments were made in all parts of the eastern United States to grow varieties of Vitis vinifera. The experiments were on a large scale and in the hands of expert vine-growers, as well trained as their fellow colonists in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and South America, countries where the colonists grew the Old World grapes as easily and as well as they are grown in the most favored parts of Europe. It is certain that the failures recorded for these two hundred years were not due to lack of effort on the part of the settlers. We now pass to more recent efforts, even more thoroughly carried out, to grow the grape of the Old World in this part of the New World. The discussion of these later attempts cannot be full. The reader can readily turn to the horticultural literature of the century just closed and find much fuller records of them than space permits in this work.

One of the first and most notable of the vineyards in the eighteenth century was that of Colonel Robert Bolling of Buckingham County, Virginia. An account of his undertaking written by one of the Bolling family some years later reads as follows: “It is now but little known that this gentleman had early turned his attention to the cultivation of the vine, and had actually succeeded in procuring and planting a small vineyard of four acres, of European grapes, at Chellow, the seat of his residence: that he had so far accomplished his object as to have the satisfaction of seeing his vines in a most flourishing condition, and arrived at an age when they were just beginning to bear; promising all the success that the most sanguine imagination could desire, when, unfortunately for his family, and perhaps for his country, he departed this life while in the Convention in Richmond, in July, 1775. Thus all his fond anticipations of being enabled, in a short time, to afford to his countrymen a practical demonstration of the facility and certainty with which grapes might be raised, and wine made, in Virginia, were suddenly frustrated; all his hopes and prospects blasted; and owing to the general want of information, in the management of vines, among us at that time; and the confusion produced by the war of the revolution, which immediately followed, this promising and flourishing little vineyard was totally neglected and finally perished.”[19]

At the time of Bolling’s death he was preparing to send to press a book on grape-growing entitled A Sketch of Vine Culture. The book was never printed but the manuscript was copied several times and parts of it were printed contemporaneously in the Virginia Gazette, and subsequently in the Bolling Memoirs and in the American Farmer.[20] Bolling’s book was largely a compilation from European sources but it contained the experiences and observations of the author in cultivating European grapes in America and though not printed, was sufficiently distributed through manuscript copies and through the papers and books mentioned above, to give its author the honor of being the first American writer on grapes.

In an essay on the cultivation of the vine published in the first volume of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society[21] printed in Philadelphia in 1771, a Mr. Edward Antill of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, gives explicit directions for grape-growing and wine-making.[22] Antill describes only foreign varieties and leads the reader to infer, though he does not say so, that he has grown many varieties of these grapes successfully. But neither his essay, nor his efforts at grape-growing, seemed to have stimulated a grape industry worthy of note. This essay of Antill’s is the second American treatise on the cultivation of the grape and was for many years the chief authority on grape-growing in America. It is greatly to be regretted that a treatise which was to be quoted for fifty years could not have been more meritorious. The eighty quarto pages written by Antill give little real or trustworthy information. It is a rambling discussion of European grapes, wine-making, the temperance question, patriotism, “wellfare of country,” and “good of mankind”. He quotes Columella, gives methods of curing grapes for raisins, and winds up with a discussion of figs. Yet a hundred years ago it was the chief work on grape-growing.

A Frenchman, Peter Legaux, founded a company in 1793 for the cultivation of grapes at Spring Mill near Philadelphia. In 1800 he published an account of his venture.[23] A vineyard of European grapes was set out and the prospects seemed favorable for the success of the undertaking. But the grapes began to fail, dissensions arose among the stock-holders, the vineyards were neglected and the company failed. Legaux speaks of his experience in grape-growing as follows:[24] “But if the native grapes of America are not the most eligible for vineyards, others are now within the reach of its inhabitants. Some years since I procured from France three hundred plants from the three kinds of grapes in the highest estimation, of which are made Burgundy, Champagne and Bordeaux wines. These three hundred plants have in ten years produced 100,000 plants; which, were the culture encouraged, would in ten years more, produce upwards of thirty millions of plants; or enough to stock more than 8000 acres, at 3600 plants to the acre, set about three feet and a half apart. I have also about 3000 plants raised from a single plant procured a few years since from the Cape of Good Hope, of the kind which produces the excellent Constantia wines. The gentlemen who at different times have done me the honour to taste these wines can bear testimony to their good quality. Although made in the hottest season, (about the middle of August) yet they were perfectly preserved without the addition of a drop of brandy or any other spirit. And in this will consist one excellency of the wines here recommended to the notice of my fellow citizens; that being made wholly of the juice of grapes, they will be light, wholesome, and excite an agreeable cheerfulness, without inflaming the blood, or producing the other ill effects of the strong brandied wines, imported from the southern parts of Europe. Since 1793, I have confined my attention chiefly to the multiplication of my vines, to supply the demand for plants, and to furnish an extended vineyard under my own direction, whenever my fellow citizens possessing pecuniary means, should be inclined to encourage and support the attempt.”

Out of this venture, however, came the Alexander grape, an offspring of a native species, and not, as Legaux held, a foreign variety, which, as we shall see later, was the first variety to be grown on a commercial scale in eastern America. Johnson,[25] writing of Legaux’s work with the grape, says that in 1801 cuttings were sent from the Spring Mill vineyards in quantities of fifteen hundred to Kentucky and Pennsylvania and smaller quantities to Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Ohio, and indicates that these cuttings in their turn were multiplied so that many diverse experiments with foreign grapes arose from Legaux’s efforts.