About The Project
Genesis of Heritage Grape Project
Stephen Casscles is a pioneering grape grower and winemaker well known within the Hudson Valley for his tireless work with heritage grapes. Over the course of a decade, Stephen and the winemakers at Milea Estate became close friends and colleagues. Stephen shared his profound knowledge about the heritage grapes of the Hudson Valley with the Milea team and everyone agreed that these varieties deserved to be conserved and shared with future generations. Thus, the Heritage Grape Project was born.
Countless grape varieties were forged in the Hudson Valley throughout mid- to late-1800s. These locally bred grape varieties make world class quality wine. Breeders from Newburgh, Iona Island, Poughkeepsie, Marlboro, and Croton Point crossed European varieties with North American species with the intent to create more sustainable grape cultivars. These breeders of the 19th century worked with the renowned horticulturists, writers and nurserymen of Hudson Valley to propagate and disseminate their varieties throughout the United States. These Hudson Valley heritage varieties went on to create wines of outstanding quality, garnering national and international accolades.
The Heritage Grape Project seeks to conserve these beloved local and historically relevant grape cultivars for future generations, while simultaneously elevating their expression to new heights of world class wine quality.
About J. Stephen Casscles
J. Stephen Casscles comes to Milea Estate Vineyards with over 45 years of experience growing heritage grape varieties in the Hudson Valley and making wine from them at leading wineries in the Valley. He comes from a farming and brick-making family which by 1780 settled in Verplank / Croton in Westchester County and by 1820 moved to Tompkins Cove / Jones Point in Rockland County. Around 1870, our branch of the Casscles family moved to Marlboro, New York to operate a mixed fruit farm that grew strawberries currants, raspberries, grapes, and stone & pome fruits. These fruits were first shipped by evening Hudson River Dayliners to New York City for the fresh fruit market, and then later-on by truck to Hunts Point in the Bronx and to Boston markets. The Casscles also operated a sporadic weekend boarding house where vacationing patrons were treated to outdoor BBQs and consumed our homemade wines and ciders. The Casscles Marlboro farm was just across the street from where A.J. Caywood developed heritage grape varieties, such as Dutchess, and which by 1971 became Benmarl Vineyards. Our family farm continued in Middle Hope. NY until 2017.
Stephen has a 12-acre farm in Athens, NY, called Cedar Cliff, where he cultivates over 110 rare heritage French-American hybrids, 19th Century heritage grape varieties from the Hudson Valley and Massachusetts, and own rooted chance hybrids that he evaluates, makes wine from, and lectures about.
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This farm is about 1/6 of a mile from the shores of the Hudson River. In addition, he lectures on wine, grape cultivation, 19th century American horticulture and landscape architecture at botanical gardens and historical societies throughout New York and New England. He is an award-winning winemaker whose wines and work have been covered by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Post, The Wine Enthusiast, Forbes Magazine, Hugh Johnson’s Annual Pocket Wine Book (2021), Albany Times-Union, and Hartford Courant.
Stephen authored Grapes of the Hudson Valley and Other Cool Climate Regions of the United States and Canada (2015), which details the history of the Hudson Valley fruit growing industry and the growing characteristics of over 170 cool climate grape varieties. This book will go to a second edition by February, 2022 and include two new chapters on 19th century grape varieties developed in Massachusetts and all of New England. In addition to his full-length horticultural work, Stephen is a frequent lecturer and contributor to academic and trade journals such as Arnoldia of the Arnold Arboretum of Boston, MA, Fruit Notes of U. Mass Amherst, Horticultural News of Rutgers University, Wine Journal of the American Wine Society, New York Fruit Quarterly of the NYS Horticultural Society, and the Hudson Valley Wine Magazine.
As a culmination of his horticultural pursuits, Stephen advises and lectures at the Fermentation Sciences Program at SUNY at Cobleskill and has a working relationship with many in the Korean grape and wine industry.
Experience the great wines made from Heritage Grapes produced by Milea Estate Vineyards
What is Sustainable Grape Growing?
Practices employed when cultivating fruit that: reduces the use and/or amount of manufactured pesticides, fertilizers, and other off-farm inputs which are often made from petro-chemicals; help to build and maintain healthy and productive soils; improve energy efficiency and lower greenhouse gas emissions needed to grow fruit; encourage biodiversity in the kinds of fruit varieties grown to thwart crop monoculture; and conserve natural resources by reducing the amount of non-reusable solid waste generated on the farm and encourage recycling.
To further the cause of pursuing sustainable fruit growing, we should consider cultivating hardy heritage grape varieties which can successfully face increasingly wider variations in our weather because of changes in our climate including: identifying fruits with increased fungus-disease resistance, enhanced drought and rain resistance, cold and heat hardiness, and survive earlier/later frost dates. In addition, produce grapes that are desirable for use in the market place; and while decreasing production costs, can be more productive in yields to increase grower incomes.
About Hudson Valley Heritage Grape Varieties
Heritage grape varieties created by Hudson Valley grape breeders in the 19th century and other Native-American varieties changed the local and national landscape on the kinds of varieties grown in the United States and were used to breed newer grape varieties. French-American direct producer hybrids are included because their arrival to the Valley from 1955 to 1990, significantly influenced the kinds of wine produced in the Valley, dramatically increased the number of wineries established here, the mix of fruits grown locally, and local cuisine. These local heritage grape varieties have a special place in our horticultural history. Further, with our rapidly changing climate and increasingly wider swings in our average and high and low temperature levels, precipitation levels, and early & late frost dates, these hardy heritage grape varieties have an important role to fill in the future of agriculture.
Many of these heritage grape varieties are very productive, fungus disease resistant, winter cold and summer heat tolerant, drought resistant, rain tolerant, sustain less damage from late spring frosts, and have a wide tolerance for the soil-types that they can grow in so they can be grown in an environmentally sustainable manner. Very importantly, these varieties are flavorful and add new unique tastes and flavor profiles to the wine-makers palate.
A note about the font used on this site:
Goudy is a font created by type designer Frederic W. Goudy (1865-1947) who lived and worked in Marlborough-on-Hudson, New York, from 1924 until his death in 1947. Goudy’s home and studio workshop, a converted pre-Revolutionary mill he christened “Deepdene” was on the Old Post Road property in Malboro, just across from the Caywood family’s boarding house.