&
P A R T
S
T W O
in
the Hudson Valley finally came
with the discovery, recognition,
and cultivation of the New
World grapes such as Alexandra,
Concord, Isabella, Niagara, Iona and
Catawba, among others. In the early 1800s,
these grapes could be grown in great abundance here in the Hudson Valley, and
farmers worked to understand what made
them so successful.
UCCESSFUL GRAPE GROWING
F RO M T H E I C E AG E TO A N EW AG E
G R A P E S, W I N E
AND
Eventually grape production began to pick
up, although winemaking lagged behind,
because these grapes produced wines that
emanated a “foxy” quality that was then
considered unattractive in wine. But with
the successful growing of these grapes,
farmers and botanists began experimenting
and breeding new strains of grapes.
THE HUDSON RIVER
VA L L E Y
By the early 1800s, the Hudson Valley’s fledgling wine industry was in flux. The vinifera that so many European settlers had
brought with them and knew how to work had come to naught. The plants could not survive the extreme weather, and those
that did succumbed to disease, rot, and the deadly phylloxera insect. The wild, native varieties such as labrusca, riparia and
vulpina mystified even the Huguenots, who could not find a way to make decent wines from them. The Valley was stymied for
wine – a common occurrence throughout the newly-formed nation – as the farmers had neither tamed their grapes nor learned
to work their “terroir.” Without decent local wines to distribute throughout the states, beer, cider, and hard spirits, especially
rum, began to fill the void. The best wines available, for a time only, were mostly imported through New York City, and came
from European countries such as France, Italy, Germany and Spain. This was a trend that would continue for the next
century. In the second part of this two-part article in honor of the Quadricentennial, winemaker Carlo De Vito explores the rise
and fall and rebirth of the Hudson Valley’s wine heritage.
In 1816, French Huguenot Jean (John)
Jacques purchased a farm in the Hudson
Valley and began planting grapes. By 1837,
needing more land, Jacques purchased and
planted additional vines of Isabella and
Catawba in Washingtonville, in Orange
County. Just two years later, in 1839, he
introduced the first commercial vintage
under his label, Blooming Grove Winery.
For nearly two decades Jacques and his
family made wine for popular consumption
as well as altar wines. In 1858, his property
and winery passed to his three sons, and
was renamed “Jacques Brothers’ Winery.”
While Underhill and Jacques Brothers were
cornering the wine market, across the river
in Amenia, in Dutchess County, a cultish
utopian community that called itself the
EARLY HUDSON VALLEY
PIONEERS
Until the early 1800s the native grapes were
often pressed into wine by the early colonialists, but vineyards were an unknown
quantity. Things began to change in 1804,
when Quaker Robert A. Underhill bought
250 acres on Croton Point in Westchester
County for farming. When Underhill died
in 1829, he left the property to his sons
Richard T. and William A. Richard, a practicing doctor in New York City, initially
planted grapevines brought from Europe
with the intention of making wines to sell,
although attempts to cultivate these vines
failed. Over the next two decades Underhill
experimented with cross-breeding native and
European vines and the results paid off –
grapes growing on vines hardy enough to
survive the Eastern climate. Growing mostly
Catawba and Isabella grapes, the vineyard
soon grew to seventy-five acres, and as the
first successful, commercial vineyard, supplied grapes to the city markets north and
south in the Valley.
© Bettmann/CORBIS
By Carlo De Vito
The Underhills were also the first winery
established in the Valley, although they did
not commercially sell the wines they produced until 1859. Dr. Underhill aimed to
produce a characteristic American wine,
and his preference was the production of a
“perfectly natural wine” – the pure juice of
the grape – that was advertised as “neither
drugged, liquored nor watered.” Their
Croton Point wines and grapes won many
awards, and were sold in New York City
from an establishment called “Pure Wine
and Grape Depot.” Underhill’s wines
earned a reputation that stretched practically around the world, and Richard T.
Underhill himself attained national reputation as one of the first great hybridizers of
the Hudson Valley.
Caywood, who settled in Marlborough and
began experimenting on his own with
grape hybrids. Caywood’s successful crossbreeding of vinifera and native grapes made
him a leading authority on hybrids, and
contributed greatly to the region and the
Eastern wine industry – in fact, one of his
more well-known hybrids, the Dutchess
grape, is still grown there today.
The Hudson Valley soon became a hotbed
of grape experimentation, and by the
middle of the nineteenth century led the
country in both hybridization, varietals
and new techniques. In addition to the
hybridizers, such as Underhill and
Caywood, were names like W.D. Barnes
(of Middle Hope), Dr. C.W. Grant (at
Iona Island), and J.H. Ricketts (of
Newburgh), who helped developed some
of the nation’s most important new grape
varietals. Noted viticulturalist William
Kniffin of Clintondale developed new
grape training techniques such as the
Hudson River umbrella, and the four- and
two-arm Kniffin pruning systems, which
quickly spread beyond the Valley region.
CONSOLIDATION AND EXPANSION
By the latter half of the nineteenth
century, grape growing in New York and
the Hudson Valley had been one of the
most successful fruit industries. By then,
Concord, Catawba, Champion, Cottage,
Clinton, Brighton, Bacchus, Delaware,
Elvira, Empire State, Hartford, Moore,
Martha, Niagara, Pocklington, Dutchess,
Worden, Wyoming and Ulster comprised
nearly all the varieties that were grown
for market.
The last of Underhill’s rare vintages
were offered by Thurber & Company of
New York City, circa 1872.
“Brotherhood of New Life,” founded their
own winery at one their communes. Led
by Thomas Lake Harris, “Brotherhood”
made wine in the Hudson Valley between
1860-1864, in the belief that wine had
divine and miraculous powers. Harris’s
wines proved to be popular, and were sold
throughout the United States, Europe and
Africa. In 1865, the commune moved to a
new location on Lake Erie, and continued
to produce their “blessed” wine until 1881,
when they relocated west to California.
INNOVATION IN GRAPE GROWING
In 1845, William T. Cornell established
a vineyard of Isabella grapes, in Ulster
County near Clintonville, and his endeavors
greatly interested his brother-in-law, Andrew
Despite the success, the earliest wineries
had undergone a transformation –
Underhill’s 1871 vintage was their last,
with the passing of Dr. Underhill that
year, and the remaining wines in the vaults
were sold by Thurber & Company of New
York City. New York Wine merchant Jesse
Emerson and his son Edward acquired
Harris’s “Brotherhood” operation when
they relocated west, and in 1886 purchased
Blooming Grove from the last surviving
Jacques brother. The Emersons consolidated their operations at Washingtonville,
and transferred the Brotherhood Wine
Company name to the current location,
where it has remained ever since.
By this time, Pellham Farm had become
one of the largest producers of grapes in
the Hudson Valley. Pellham Farm was the
name of the magnificent Hudson River
estate of Robert L. Pell, Esq., in Esopus,
Ulster County. In addition to his rather
sizeable orchard and fruit operation, Pell
HUDSON VALLEY WINE • Summer/Fall 2009
5
Courtesy of Marlboro Free Library
Noted author and naturalist John Burroughs,
also well-known as “the vine-dresser of
Esopus,” cultivated Delaware, Niagara,
Worden and Moore’s Early from his nineacre Riverby Vineyards, at West Park in
Ulster County. As Burroughs grew into old
age, he could no longer tend the vines, and
he eventually gave way to his son, Julian,
who also tended the Riverby Vineyards
for many years.
DECLINE AND A NEW AGE
The grape industry in the Hudson Valley
grew rapidly towards the middle of the nineteenth century, and reached its height
between 1880 and 1890, when the Census
Report recorded that there were some
13,000 acres under cultivation. In some
sections grape growing was found to be so
profitable, that it assumed gigantic proportions and many vineyards were heavily
over-planted with worthless commercial
varieties, or in areas which were totally
unsuited to grape growing. Within a short
time, the use of table grapes for eating and
juice and jellies began to surpass the
amounts used for wine. Competition from
other districts became stronger, viticulture
began drifting to the Finger Lakes, the
Midwest and California, and the Valley
region become more prominent in fruits
and tree fruits. And while the Hudson River
Valley was considered the birthplace of
American viticulture – claiming the oldest
winery, the oldest vineyard, the first distributing point, the greatest number of varieties,
and the largest body of hybridists and viticulturists – by 1900, grape cultivation had
dropped to 6,000 acres of vineyards.
phylloxera-resistant. However, French scientists like Albert Seibel, worked diligently
and cross-pollinated French and American
grapes. This experimentation by French
hybridists, intended to save their European
vines, lead to new grape varieties that would
ultimately usher in a new age for the
Valley, and become the basis of many
Hudson Valley vineyards, including Baco
Noir, Seyval Blanc, Vidal Blanc, Chelois,
Chambourcin, and DeChaunac, to name
just a few.
that even good packing, low prices and
intensive distribution could hardly suffice
to dispose of the crop. Unfermented grape
juice, champagne and commercial sweet
wines began to rise, creating additional
markets. There were still a few vineyards
operating in the Valley, but few specialized
in wine. Along with Young’s Farm and
Meckes’s Vineyards in Marlborough, the
Bolognesi family had founded the Hudson
Valley Wine Company in 1904, in
Highland, Ulster County. For four centuries, the Bolognesi family had made
wines in Italy, and now newly settled in
the US, continued the family tradition,
initially making altar wines for local
monasteries and later, sparkling wines.
By the turn of the twentieth century local
grape production had become so plentiful
THE NOBLE EXPERIMENT
Courtesy of Marlboro Free Library
had a 50-acre vineyard of Isabella grapes,
originally planted in 1854. The vineyard
produced one hundred bushel-and-a-half
baskets in a single day during harvest season, and Pell’s farm required four steamers
a day to transport his goods to market. Pell
wisely grew Isabella because it was picked
at a different time than Concord, Iona and
others, and gave him an advantage in the
marketplace, his grapes arriving when no
others were to be had.
Bowing to pressure from increasingly
vocal Temperance groups, the Volstead
Act was ratified in 1919, forbidding the
sale of “intoxicating liquors” for popular
consumption. More commonly known as
Prohibition, the Act was a disastrous pol-
Meckes’s Vineyards, circa early 1900s.
Other well-known vineyards of the time
included Young’s Farm and Meckes’s
Vineyards, both of which were located in
Marlborough. The Meckes were descendants
of the Caywoods, of the Caywood property
on River Road. There were also many growers, whose families continue to farm:
Baldwin, Greiner, Borchert, Fino, Quimby,
Weed, Lyons, Cosman and Shrieber.
Eventually, all of France’s vineyards were
replanted, with French vinifera grafted onto
Eastern American rootstocks such as riparia,
aestivalis and rotundifolia species, which were
In the ensuing decades after Prohibition,
American wine still had the unfortunate
reputation of being a “cheap drink,” and
it wasn’t until World War II, when the
association between wine and spirits was
strengthened, that several large distillers
branched out into the wine business.
As with most other agriculturally-based
enterprises, winemaking began to grow
during the postwar years. As prosperous
and well-traveled Americans began
developing a taste for table wines, wine
consumption was transported from the gutter into affluent and sophisticated homes.
THE RETURN TO WINE
It was at this point, in 1950, that Everett
Summer Crosby began High Tor Vineyards,
in Rockland County. Crosby wasn’t a pioneer, nor was he a great winemaker, but he
created a vineyard in the Hudson Valley
that soon became the most famous winery
on the East Coast. Crosby set out to
prove that he could produce quality grapes
icy, giving rise to organized crime, illegal
speakeasies, and a loss of substantial
tax revenue on alcohol. While the commercial manufacture, sale, and transport
of alcohol was illegal, personal manufac-
As early as the mid-nineteenth century,
American vines brought to France for
experimentation had brought with them
the curse – that native, North American
grapevine root louse which came to be
known as phylloxera. The louse infested
vineyards throughout France, killing off
some of its most prized vineyards. Decades
of research got underway – both in breeding, grafting, and vineyard techniques.
Wine Company, were able to survive by
making and selling sacramental or altar
wines, with such inspirational names as
Loyola, Aquinas and St. Benedict.
ture of wine and cider from fruit was
and wines just 20 miles north of the
George Washington Bridge. His products
stood the test as he marketed as much of
his Rockland White, Rockland Red and
Rockland Rosé as he and his family could
produce. Crosby’s lasting legacy was that
he was an inspiration to a new breed and
generation of winemakers set on creating
small, quality wines in the valley. Crosby
was also mentor to many, including a
young fledgling vintner named Mark
Miller, who founded Benmarl Winery in
1957, on the site of the former vineyards
of Andrew Caywood.
Building on what Crosby had created,
Miller took Hudson Valley winemaking
to a new level. He was widely regarded as
the father of the winemaking renaissance
in the Hudson Valley, prompting even the
New York Times to acknowledge that he
was the “highly visible public advocate for
small artisanal wineries, known as farm
wineries.” Miller’s first harvest was in 1967,
and his first vintage was sold commercially
in 1972. Benmarl wines were praised by
critics and featured at prominent restaurants, including the Four Seasons in
continued on page 9
T H E M A K I N G O F A N AVA
allowed. By the time repeal was finally
As early as 1978, the US Department of Treasury began issuing regulations allowing for
granted in 1933, Prohibition was found
“Farmerette” in the vineyard at Young’s
Farm, circa 1920s.
to be especially devastating to the
fledgling New York wine industry. Vines
The 1919 implementation of Prohibition
was devastating to the alcohol-brewing
and wine industry in the Hudson Valley.
Many grape growers converted vineyards
to other crops, wineries closed, and the
grape juice factories absorbed a fairly
large portion of stock that was formerly
used for wine. Few wineries, such as
Brotherhood and the Hudson Valley
had been left to rot, or plowed over,
wineries abandoned, and much of the
institutional knowledge was lost as winemakers either emigrated to other wine
producing countries or left the business
altogether. It would be many decades
before winemaking in the Hudson Valley
would recover.
the establishment of definitive American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) or wine appellations, to
distinguish wine grape-growing regions in the United States. A viticultural area is based
on geographical features which distinguish and affect the growing conditions of the area
– soil, elevation, physical features, etc., though AVA designations do not limit the type of
grapes grown, the method of vinification, or the crop yield. On July 6, 1982, the “Hudson
River Region” was the 8th region adopted as a new American Viticultural Area (The Long
Island/Hamptons and Finger Lakes AVAs weren’t approved until 1985 and 1987 respectively). With a recorded 224,000 acres, Hudson Valley is second to Napa Valley acreage.
Now regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), there are 193
official AVAs, as of April 2009, with additional Appellations of Origin in all 50 states.
AND SO IT FLOWS ...
1800
1890
Discovery of native, New
World species enables
successful grape growing
in the Hudson Valley.
Wine production and
grape growing reaches
their peak in the Hudson
Valley, with Brotherhood
and many large wineries
cultivating 13,000 acres
of vines.
1957
Building upon the success of
High Tor, Mark Miller establishes
Benmarl Winery and the Société
Des Vignerons, and launches a
winemaking renaissance that
leads to the Farm Winery Act
of 1976.
•
•
[ PART TWO ]
1845
6
HUDSON VALLEY WINE • Summer/Fall 2009
2009
Courtesy of
Brotherhood Winery
Vineyards and wineries
prosper as the Hudson Valley
becomes a hotbed of experimentation. Hybridists begin
crossbreeding and creating
new grape varieties.
1933
Repeal of Prohibition goes into
effect, leaving only a handful of
wineries growing grapes and
making wine, as many farms
were converted to fruit and
other crops.
With over 30 wineries, select
Hudson Valley vintages commemorate 400 years of the discovery
of the Hudson River, as well as its
unique winemaking heritage.
HUDSON VALLEY WINE • Summer/Fall 2009
7