A SHORT HISTORY OF HUDSON VALLEY HERITAGE GRAPE VARIETIES FOR THE MILEA ESTATE VINEYARDS HUDSON HERITAGE WINE PROJECT
By J. Stephen Casscles, Esq.
This article contains a brief history about Hudson River Valley Heritage Grape Varieties and the reasons why they should be characterized as “Hudson Valley Heritage Grape Varieties” for the Milea Estate Vineyards Hudson Heritage Wine Project.
The definition of a heritage grape variety is an indigenous, native or historically notable grape variety found in a region which becomes part of the region’s cultural or historical past. Such grapes are/were, at one point, either commonly grown in a region or positively impacted the grape growing industry, wine production, or table use of such varieties. Heritage grapes influenced the surrounding community in the kinds of crops grown, income generated for grower families, the culture and heritage of the region, the wines produced, and our local cuisine.
The Hudson River Valley is universally recognized as one the oldest wine growing regions in the United States by both historians and wine writers and that French-American hybrids play an important part in the history of this winegrowing region. Leon D. Adams, the author of The Wines of America (1973) and Frank Schoonmaker, author of Frank Schoonmaker’s Encyclopedia of Wine (1969) recognized the importance of such hybrid grapes to the Valley’s history and heritage. As a point of interest, in The Wines of America, the inside cover of this landmark American wine book has a photo of the entry hall of Benmarl Vineyards which was wall papered with wine labels from wines produced all over the country, especially those labels of wines made in the Hudson Valley. That collage of wine labels is still hanging on the entry way hall at Benmarl Vineyards.
The grape varieties included in our project do satisfy the definition of what Hudson Valley heritage grape varieties should be. These heritage grape varieties are broken down into three categories.
The first group of grape varieties were bred in the Hudson Valley by local hybridizers or isolated and named in the Hudson Valley between 1840 to 1890. These breeders and horticulturalists included James H. Ricketts, Dr. Charles W. Grant, and Dr. William Culbert of Newburgh, N.Y., Andrew Jackson Caywood of Marlboro and Poughkeepsie, and the Underhill family of Croton Point.
In addition to these local grape breeders, in the 19th century, the Hudson Valley produced many nationally renowned horticulturalists, writers, and nursery-owners, such as Andrew Jackson Downing and his brother Charles Downing of Newburgh and the Rev. Edward P. Roe of Cornwall-on-Hudson. These skilled horticulturalists collected and disseminated grape varieties nationally and named many of the heritage grapes that were developed in the United States, in addition to helping to establish the two major national horticultural societies, i.e., Massachusetts Horticultural Society and the American Pomological Society. Examples of this group of heritage grapes include Bacchus, Croton, Empire State, Delaware, Dutchess, Iona, and Jefferson.
The creation of these Hudson Valley heritage varieties affected the local agricultural economy in many ways. First, they were used nationally and internationally as a base for the further breeding of new cool climate grape varieties that are fungus disease resistant, productive, and which can better accommodate to our changing climate. Our climate is becoming warmer, wetter, and more violent in its weather patterns. Second, unlike most other wine regions in the United States, Hudson Valley grape growers grew a much more diverse set of grape varieties that included not only Concord, Catawba, Niagara, and Delaware, but locally developed varieties such as Bacchus, Eumlean, Iona, Dutchess, the Rogers hybrids, and many others.
The second group of heritage grape varieties included in the Milea Heritage Wine Project, while developed in New England in the mid-19th century, were imported to the Hudson Valley from 1860-1910 to be evaluated for cultivation, used in breeding programs, and written about by our local horticulturalists for national horticultural journals. These grapes include the Edward S. Rogers varieties (of Salem, Massachusetts) such as Agawam, Lindley, Goethe, Massasoit, and Salem. Other New England varieties included Diana and Winchell.
The third group of heritage grape varieties include French-American hybrids that were imported from France to the United States via Canada just before World War II by Philip Wagner of Maryland and distributed to Hudson Valley viticulturalists during the early to mid- 1950s. The arrival of these French-American hybrids to the Hudson Valley, profoundly affected the Hudson Valley wine industry and farming community.
Before the arrival of French-American grape varieties to the Hudson Valley in the 1950s, there were only four wineries in the Valley, i.e., Brotherhood, Hudson Valley Wine Company, Royal Kedem, and Marlboro Champagne Cellars. These large wineries produced wines that tended to be sweet table wines, dessert wines such as ports and sherries, and sparkling wines made from labrusca grape varieties, such as Bacchus, Catawba, Concord, Delaware, Dutchess, Iona, and Niagara. After the introduction of French-American hybrids, there was an explosion of new wineries founded in the Valley which used almost exclusively French-American grape varieties. These varieties included, for whites, Aurora, Seyval Blanc, Verdelet, Vidal, and Vignoles (Ravat 51); and for the reds, Baco Noir, Burdin, Cascade, Chancellor, Chambourcin, Chelois, de Chaunac, Foch, Leon Millot, and Villard Noir.
By 1950, these French-American hybrids were introduced to the Valley by Philip Wagner of Riderwood, Maryland, the former editorial page editor for the Baltimore Sun, and founder of Boordy Vineyards and Nursery. Mr. Wagner was instrumental in distributing his newly imported French-American hybrids via Canada to newly interested wine growers such as Everett Crosby of High Tor Vineyards (1951) and Mark Miller who, along with his wife Dene, founded Benmarl Vineyards (1957). It was Crosby and Miller who then evaluated these varieties, propagated them, and distributed them to others interested in establishing their own vineyards in the Valley.
In addition to Mark Miller who promoted the introduction of French-American hybrids to others in the Hudson Valley, he along with John Dyson of Millbrook, Ben Feder of Clinton Corners, Walter S. Taylor of Bully Hill Vineyards, Fred Johnson of Westfield, NY, and Ray Knafo, representing Boordy Vineyards in the Finger Lakes, pushed for the enactment of the Farm Winery Law in 1976. The passage of this law substantially reduced the cost of a license to operate a winery and permitted their wines to be directly sold to the public at the winery (thereby avoiding the Three-Tier system that created fire walls between those who manufactured wine, wholesaled wine, and sold such wines at retail). This law led to an explosion of new farm wineries not only in the Hudson Valley, but across New York State.
With the enactment of the Farm Winery Law in New York State and the increasing availability of recently evaluated French-American hybrid grapes to produce quality wine, this set the stage for an explosion in the number of new wineries that were established in the Valley. These wineries, unlike the large commercial ones that existed in the Hudson Valley that were generally owned by a corporation and purchased most of their fruit from commercial growers who generally grew other fruit crops in addition to grapes, these new wineries were small, family owned, and grew their own grapes for estate wine production. What also differentiated these new farm wineries from others in New York State and the East Coast, was that most were owned and operated by individuals who were almost exclusively Francophile in their inclinations on wine production and the wines that should be produced. In France, there is also an emphasis on blending more than several grape varieties together to create a more complete and interesting wine (for both red and white wines). Many Hudson Valley winemakers, along with Philip Wagner, Mark Miller, Eric Miller, Ben Feder, and Richard Eldridge had either lived in France or visited France extensively and learned French winemaking practices and brought that knowledge back to the Valley.
At the urging of Philip Wagner, Everett Crosby, and Mark Miller, with the assistance of Doug Moorhead of Presque Isle Wine Cellars in Pennsylvania, from the mid to late 1950s to the early 1970s, new adherents who wanted to start local estate wineries included a core group of vintners in the 1970s, such as Ben Feder, Clinton Vineyards, William Wetmore, Cascade Mountain Vineyards, and John Dyson of Millbrook Vineyards. The list of new wineries that were established in the Hudson Valley, in approximate chronological order, that based their new businesses on French-American hybrid grapes after they were introduced included from 1965 to 1985: High Tor Vineyards, Benmarl Vineyards, Clinton Vineyards, Cascade Mountain Vineyards, Brimstone Hill Winery, Chateau Georges Vineyards (Rivendell Winery), Cagnasso Winery, Cottage Vineyards, West Park Vineyards, Amberleaf Vineyards, El Paso Winery, Magnanini Winery, Eaton Vineyards, Northeast Vineyards, North Salem Vineyards, Walker Valley Vineyards, Barry’s Dover Winery, Adair Vineyards, Baldwin Vineyards, Woodstock Winery, and Whitecliff Vineyards.
In addition, because of the introduction of French-American hybrids, the large wineries in the Hudson Valley began to shift their production away from sweet labrusca wines and dessert wines and towards producing dry table wines made from French-American hybrids, especially Brotherhood Winery, under the direction of Cesar Baeza (Chelois, Baco Noir, Seyval Blanc, and Vidal), Hudson Valley Wine Company, and Royal Kedem.
During this time period (1950-1970), Miller, Wagner, and Moorhead, supported the work of and collaborated with Pierre Galet, the famous French grape ampelographer, Lucie Morton of Virginia, and Cesar Baeza of Brotherhood Winery. National wine writers and chroniclers of wine in the United States, such as Leon Adams, Frank Schoonmaker, Hugh Johnson, Frank Prial and Howard Goldberg eagerly reported on the progress of our local vintners and their work to promote the production of wine from French-American hybrids in the Hudson Valley and across the East Coast.
Below are quotes from twelve articles of the national newspaper of record, The New York Times, from 1976 to 2009 that documented that French-American hybrid grape varieties were the signature grape varieties of the Valley and that they contributed to the sizeable expansion in the number of local wineries from 1950 to 1985. Further, that these grape varieties were an important part of the history and heritage of our local wine industry. Many more articles from our regional newspapers covered the important role that French-American hybrids played in the heritage of our local wine industry. Such newspapers included the Poughkeepsie Journal, Newburgh Evening News, Middletown Times Herald-Record, Kingston Daily Freeman, Albany Times Union, and Hartford Courant,
“The hybrids, pioneered in this country by Philip Wagner in Maryland, bear little resemblance to the traditional New York State wines, made from labrusca grapes. “ …The Millers “.. are strong defenders of the hybrids as excellent grapes for the area.” … “The hybrids have produced wines with a distinctive regional character here” stated Mark Miller. Prial, F., “Wine Talk”, The New York Times, June 23,1976. p.26
“Brotherhood now is working on French-American hybrids, which is good news to anyone who prefers his wine in a French or California style.” Prial, F., “A Harvest of Upstate Wineries”. The New York Times, September 7,1977. p.61.
This article documents the wines made by 10 recently established farm wineries in the Hudson Valley that are concentrating on making wines from French-American hybrids. Prial, F., “Thriving, Surprising Hudson Valley Wine”., The New York Times, November 29, 1978, Section C, p. 1.
This article states that “[a]s have so many Eastern wine makers, [Miller and others in the Hudson Valley] took as his mentor and teacher Philip Wagner, the Baltimore newspaper editor who became the progenitor of the hybrid-grape movement in this country.”… “Philip Wagner showed that French-American hybrids produced wine in the European style while standing up to the harsh East Coast winters.” “Soon small wineries began to appear on both sides of the Hudson Valley, from Westchester in the south almost to Albany in the north. Wineries such as Cascade Mountain in Amenia, Cagnasso and Cottage Vineyards in Marlboro, Clinton Vineyards in Clinton Corners and Eaton Vineyards in Pine Plains. Brimstone Hill opened in Pine Bush and Walker Valley Vineyards in Walker Valley,… Northeast Vineyards in Millerton. [and High Tor Vineyards]. Prial, F., “Wine: Following the Dream”. The New York Times, August 12, 1984, Section 6, p. 52.
“Mr. Miller, …. is determined to demonstrate that good wine can be made in the Hudson region. He is constantly experimenting with blends of such grapes as Seyval Blanc, Vignoles, Verdelet, and Burdin, major white-wine varieties in New York State, and red grapes such as Baco Noir, Chelois, Marechal Foch, deChaunac, and Chancellor….” Miller, B., “At This Winery, Your Very Own Wine”. The New York Times, October 17, 1984, Section C, p. 18.
“Just north of New York City, 21 federally licensed wineries are also married – to a river. Nineteen, east and west of the Hudson in Dutchess, Ulster, Orange, Rockland and Westchester Counties, …. Many [of their wines] are produced from French-American hybrids – which seem to define the region’s identity – because they yield tasty wines, are winter-resistant and generate cash flow.” Richard Eldridge and his wife, Valerie, expressed their philosophy of winemaking that is shared by many other Hudson Valley winemakers, “[t]heir ideal is French-style reds and whites made from hybrids – vines combining European grape quality with winter-hardiness of American rootstock, a crucial matter where frigid weather may massacre vineyards.” Goldberg, H., “A Boomlet in Wineries on the Banks of the Hudson”. The New York Times, October 9, 1985, Section C, p. 1.
“But other … varietals have their place in the valley, too. As vinifera has increased in importance statewide, wines made from French-American hybrid grapes, long a staple of the valley’s wine economy, are beginning to be appreciated as a version of vins de pays- country wines.” Goldberg, H. “Exploring a Valley of Vineyards”. The New York Times, July 28, 1989, Section C, p. 1.
This article details the debate between producing vinifera or French-American grape wines. It goes on to document that a majority of the Valley’s wineries continue to devote their energies to make wine from French-American grape varieties such as Aurora, Seyval Blanc, Vidal, Vignoles (whites) Baco Noir, Chancellor, and deChaunac (reds). The wineries cited in this article include Clinton Vineyards, Rivendell Winery, Benmarl Vineyards, Cascade Mountain Vineyards, Brimstone Hill Vineyards, Brotherhood, and Baldwin Vineyards. Prial, F., “The Wine Regions: The Hudson Valley; Raising the Stakes for New York Wine”. The New York Times. December 4, 1991, Section C, p. 1.
This article reports on the varying approaches of Hudson Valley wine producers in making wine, with some remaining loyal to producing wines from French-American hybrids (Benmarl and Brotherhood) and others such as West Park and Millbrook Vineyards pushing for vinifera based wines. “Wine: Hudson Valley’s Wide Variety”, Kalish, G., The New York Times, September 20, 1992, Section 13WC, p. 25.
The obituary of Everett Sumner Crosby cited his work as the founder of High Tor Vineyards and Winery in Rockland County for more than 20 years. Further, that he purchased the historic Van Orden House in 1950 to prove that he could produce quality grapes and wines just 20 miles north of the George Washington Bridge. His wines were made exclusively from French-American hybrid grapes (Aurora, Rayon D’Or, Seyval Blanc, and Seibel 13.047 (whites) and Baco Noir, Cascade, Chancellor, Chelois, Colobel, Landot 262, and others (reds) and were called Rockland White, Rockland Red, and Rockland Rose. “Everett S. Crosby, 82; Wrote About Winery”. January 13, 1994, Section D, p. 21.
The obituary of Mark Miller cited his work and that he was “widely regarded as the father of the winemaking renaissance in the Hudson Valley”. He pushed for the production of wine by smaller artisanal wineries, known as farm wineries, and for the production of wine by French-American hybrid grapes. “Today, the Hudson Valley is home to more than 20 wineries”, whose existence is due partly to Miller’s influence. Fox, M., “Mark Miller, 89, Champion of New York Wines, Dies”. The New York Times, September 16, 2008.
The obituary of Ben Feder cited his work as the owner of Clinton Vineyards, whose existence “helped [to] establish the Hudson Valley as a serious winemaking region.” The primary grape that he grew was the French-American white hybrid grape Seyval Blanc. “Ben brought pride back to the local grape by making something elegant out of it. The sparkling wines were really exceptional lots of finesse, very French in style.”. His first vines of Seyval Blanc were planted in 1976. Feder was a strong supporter and lobbied the NYS Legislature to enact the Farm Winery Act of 1976. Grimes, W., “Ben Feder, Hudson Valley Winemaker, Dies at 86”. The New York Times, September 30, 2009.
Conclusion
In light of the above, at Milea Estate Vineyards, we believe that the grape varieties mentioned above are heritage grape varieties that have played a significant role in the Valley’s past winemaking heritage. Further, that these grape varieties should remain a part of the winemaking heritage of the Valley. This is because these grapes are winter hardy, survive late Spring frosts, are productive, fungus disease resistant (use less pesticides/fungicides), and make quality wine in a number of varying styles. Further, that with our changing climate and weather patterns, these heritage grape varieties should be relied upon by our commercial growers to produce a quality crop of fruit consistently each year, regardless of what Mother Nature throws at us. Without the inclusion of productive French-American hybrids, Hudson Valley Heritage varieties bred locally, and Rogers hybrids, growers will have fewer options to operate their farms in an environmentally and economically sustainable manner at a profit margin which will permit them to stay in farming. From the standpoint of all residents of the Hudson Valley, it is important to keep a viable agricultural economy in our area to help to retain open spaces, protect our environment, and retain a sustainable tax base to provide municipal services for all of our residents.
References:
Adams, Leon, The Wines of America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973.
Casscles, J. S., Grapes of the Hudson Valley and Other Cool Climate Regions of the United States and Canada. Coxsackie, N.Y.: Flint Mine Press, 2015.
Crosby, Everett., The Vintage Years, The Story of High Tor Vineyards. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
DeVito, Carlo, Doug Moorhead, The Father of Pennsylvania Wine or Ask Doug. American Society Wine Journal. Winter, 2021, vol. 53 (no.4). 12-18.
Miller, Mark, Wine – A Gentleman’s Game, the Adventures of an Amateur Winemaker Turned Professional. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.
The New York Times, feature column “Wine Talk” (1976-2009)
Schoonmaker, Frank. Frank Schoonmaker’s Encyclopedia of Wine. New York: Hastings House, 1969.
Wagner, Philip, American Wines and Wine-Making. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.
HV Heritage Grape Def
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