Folks have been making wine commercially in the Finger Lakes for 165 years. Wineries have waxed and waned, come and gone. Some have been small backyard mom-and-pop operations… or “boutique” wineries, if you want to get hoity-toity about it. Others have been huge employers and major tourism magnets.
Emerson Klees has been making wine for 35 years, and writing books about our region for twenty. Blending both varieties, his latest work is Finger Lakes Wineries: A Pictorial History. Here he covers wineries past and present in 110 pages of well-captioned photos, plus more text bringing the total page count to 160.
Much of the book covers Keuka Lake – unsurprising, given the historic nature of the work. But an entire chapter is dedicated to Widmer Winery in Naples, and the last two chapters – covering the time from Repeal of Prohibition to the present day – range all across the region.
I look at a LOT of old photos, and I was excited to find plenty in this book that I’d never seen before. One full-page 1880 image shows men and horses cutting the caves four stories deep at Pleasant Valley… it’s remarkable how sheer they’ve cut the face of the rock. In other photos men strain at a grape press, heaving on a bar that seems to be an undressed tree limb. Men riddle champagne bottles, or cap, wrap, and pack at Gold Seal. A horse-drawn wagon is laden high with filled grape flats for Empire State Wine Company in Penn Yan.
A lot of what I see in the course of my work is nineteenth-century images, so I was intrigued to inspect photos from the mid- to late-twentieth century showing, for instance, machine corking; large apparatus for pasteurizing; conveyor belts; and hydraulic presses. Governor Hugh Carey, Governor George Pataki, and Senator Robert F. Kennedy glide through the pages.
From time to time I guide tour buses through Naples on the way to Canandaigua, and I enjoy telling the passengers the Widmer’s story, which gets its own chapter here. Widmer’s has a beautiful setting, and adds a special sparkle to Naples. Mr. and Mrs. Widmer moved from Switzerland in 1882, and set about planting grapes even as they were building their home. There’s one story Emerson doesn’t mention, but which his pictures still illuminate. Mr. and Mrs. Widmer wanted expansion capital at an early stage, so they went to banker Maxfield for a loan. Since he had his own winery, he turned these new competitors down. The Widmers thrived anyway, and in 1940 their son had the great satisfaction of buying the Maxfield Cellars and folding it into the business his parents had begun and built.
Several of the wineries have their own interesting stories or offerings. Eagle Crest in Conesus was founded by Bishop McQuaid to supply communion wine for Catholic churches. Ray Fedderman in Prattsburgh was the first African American vintner. Earle Estates brews mead (a honey-based alcohol) as well as wine. At Cayuga Ridge, enthusiasts may lease, tend, and harvest ten, twenty, or thirty vines.
Of course there are many familiar faces, for the story of the wineries is, like all the other stories, a story about people. The Taylor family is here, from Walter through Greyton, Fred, and Clarence down to Walter S. So are the Franks, from Dr. Konstantin down through Willy and Fred. So is Paul Garrett, who watched his family name die out and created Garrett Chapel to preserve its memory.
Also valuable, especially for us non-specialists, is a TWENTY-PAGE appendix briefly describing grape species (some with regional names such as Aurora, Steuben, and Cayuga White), plus a ten-page glossary of grape and wine terms. The whole thing makes a very useful and enjoyable introduction to Finger Lakes winemaking. Thank you, Emerson – again!
Monthly Archives: February 2014
Wellsboro and Gmeiner: Worth the Trip!
This blog is about wanderings in western New York (notice the title), but this week I’m wandering a little farther afield – actually out of state, if not by much. So I’ll say, not sue me, but indulge me; it’s worth the trip.
In the NORTHERN Tier village of Wellsboro is a gem often overlooked by us SOUTHERN Tier folks. Month by month, Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center unveils art – usually contemporary art – and admission is always free.
Currently the show is “Something Old, Something New”: textured painting and fine art photography by Paul Bozzo of Mansfield. As he says, the “fine art” photography is his new field, largely developed in the past year. He’s been working at his old art for 43 years.
The photos run from Prague to Elmira, and they all have been manipuated in some way – perhaps by altering colors, or by processing them into an apparently-painted look. Our favorite was a summer scene on the edge of a little pond, but I also liked the white house with which the exhibit opened, and the bleak-but-beautiful “Country Life.” We both enjoyed a snow-covered gazebo with a Christmas star, not to mention a pair of horses. Joyce was enthusiastic about a blue-on-black montage that reminded her of a quilt.
I had one of those unexpected and unexplainable collisions that art sometimes provokes. A black-and-white photo of a young girl looking out a kitchen window staggered me, erupting up intense memories of my mother at her own sink more than half a century ago, the window surrounded with garlands of greens that she grew in simple water glasses.
Why? The girl reminded me of no one. The kitchen wasn’t much like ours. I had no desire to own the picture, and indeed didn’t even like it especially. But that tidal wave of sunlight through the window over the sink washed me instantly back through almost my entire life. If there isn’t one already, maybe we need a bumper sticker: Art Happens.
While half of the pieces were photos, the other half were paintings, mostly on inscribed Masonite. The most prominent feature of the inscribed designs is geometric patterns. In groping to describe them, I would cast out the observation that they suggest work done with a Spirograph. Mr. Bozzo should NOT be insulted by the comparison – I’m just trying to get the reader into the ballpark, not onto the diamond.
While we enjoyed it all, and had a good experience together, we found that we’re not enthusiasts – which is fine. Sticking with what you already know and like is a sure-fire route to stagnation. We like to explore and grow. Now and then you get caught in a tidal wave.
Arthur Gmeiner had no connections with Wellsboro until he gifted this gallery to the community 45 years ago, on condition that samples of his own art continue to be exhibited as well… just now, paintings of a country church and of Wellsboro’s own Green Memorial Library are on view. Each month of every year is a new show… the 2014 calendar also include quilts, comics art, a regional juried art exhibit, and a regional juried photo exhibit. Lectures and concerts also take place. The gallery is open to the public without charge from 2 to 5, seven days a week except holidays.
Nor is that all the town has to offer, for Wellsboro in some ways is like a time capsule. Some towns seem that way because nothing’s going on, which is emphatically NOT the case here. In Wellsboro, these time capsule treasures are thriving. They include:
*A broad boulevard with grassy median, illuminated by gaslights.
*An original manufactured diner, the Wellsboro Diner. It’s been added onto, but in such a way as to preserve the original diner intact. Several autumns back we ate in the diner just at the right time for the high-school homecoming parade to pass beneath our window.
*A large downtown department store (Dunham’s). At one time we both had winter coats from Dunham’s – my wife still wears hers.
*A downtown hotel (the Penn-Wells), up-to-date in its comforts but still rejoicing in its old-time radiators, its high doors and ceilings, and its quirkily-shaped rooms.
*A historic walk-in theater, the Arcadia, showing first-run movies.
There’s plenty more, of course. I’ve had a book signing (and made many purchases) at From My Shelf Books. This week we ate at George’s, the Greek restaurant. I bought a 1950s comic book from the Pop Culture Shoppe, handkerchiefs at Dunham’s, a sweater from Garrison’s Men’s Wear. It was worth the trip.
Yates County History Center — A Taste of How We Grew
In continuing our series on county historical societies in our area, we’re now taking a look at the triple museums of the Yates History Center.
It’s technically the Yates County Genealogical and Historical Society in Penn Yan, which operates the Oliver House Museum; the L. Caroline Underwood Museum; and the Scherer Carriage House, all on the same complex accessible from Main Street or Chapel Street.
Oliver House is a brick 1852 Italianate home where five major rooms exhibit home life in the Victorian era. There’s a space dedicated to the Native American history of the area, and another for changing exhibits — currently, “Steamin’ on Keuka.”
Several years ago the more modern home next door on Chapel was repurposed as the Underwood Museum, honoring the long-term teacher whose bequest made this addition possible. In addition to interpreting and communicating about local life, one exhibit here showcases 44 personal objects that she desired always to be on exhibit.
This home’s 1930s garage was converted into the Scherer Carriage House, centered on the eighteenth-century coachee of Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend. Jemima was a key founder and mover of white settlement in our region.
The coachee is a small vehicle theoretically seating six including the driver, who rode inside. The chassis supported the vehicle on which the Friend rode up from Philadelphia to the Dresden area near Seneca Lake in 1790. Originally from Rhode Island, Jemima Wilkinson was the founder and the center of an idiosyncratic religious sect. She had sent followers ahead to establish a settlement for the group and to make an earthly home for her. She later removed to Jerusalem on Keuka.
Once she arrived in the lakes, the carriage wasn’t used too much. Jemima preferred riding (her sidesaddle is also in the new exhibit space), and the roads, such as they were, didn’t suit well for carriages anyhow. But by 1810 they’d been improved, and Wilkinson was feeling the effects of age. She sent her carriage to Canandaigua to be rebuilt as the coachee. On the back transom are the flourishing letters “U.F.” (Universal Friend), along with a Latin cross and a star of David.
The coachee passed through several hands once Jemima “left time” in 1819, and was gifted to Ontario County Historical Society in 1941. But though rebuilt in Canandiagua, the coachee’s spiritual home was in Yates County, and it remained a sort of poor relation for years. Finally it was transferred to Yates in 2004.
Now the carriage house is dedicated to the Friend. Jemima Wilkinson’s 1816 life portrait is here, and her broad-brimmed beaver hat. Her slippers are here, and the conch shell she used to call worshipers to meeting. There are saddle baskets given to her by Seneca Indians, and a silk velvet purse with elaborate metal embroidery, given by a French aristocrat for whom she provided hospitality. You can see the Bible she pored over, the lap desk she labored on, the clock by which she managed her time, and a Queen Anne chair she inherited from her mother.
So a visit to Yates History Center gives you a taste of local life from the late 1700s right through the middle of the 20th century. And that’s not even considering the research and genealogical resources that are available by appointment. Take a drive out to Penn Yan, and get a feel for how our region grew.
Tanglewood Nature Center — Forty Years Naturally
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If we lived in Elmira or Big Flats, or even Corning, we’d go there more often. But even from Bath we make the pilgrimage now and then, as we did twice in the past month, to Tanglewood Nature Center and Museum.
These last two trips were “on task” behavior, as our son Joshua in Houston asked us to deliver two framed photos for Tanglewood’s nature photography contest. We dropped them off, and we dropped in for the announcement of winners — he got second place in a field of twenty, for his “Stone Walls and Wooden Bridges” photo of Stony Brook Park!
His other picture, “Thunder in the Air,” was a vertical image of Taughannock Falls. First-place winner was a fine color close-up of a red-tailed hawk eating a dead snake. The fact that I can write about this at once enthusiastically and off-handedly proves that I am indeed a nature enthusiast. To me, and I’m sure to the good folks at Tanglewood, this makes an ideal subject for a photo. Third place was Edward Cordes’ hummingbird darting among yellow blossoms — an image which also made the cover of the annual report.
Some of the images are still on exhibit at the museum, so if you stop by you might get to see one of our favorites, “Gathering in the Swamp.” With stunningly-lighted vegetation, this photographer captured a dozen or more Canada geese, with a great blue heron flapping past in the background. I liked Steve Brinthaupt’s large picture “Life Along the River,” showing a blue damselfly on a green leaf… it brought me back to my waterside childhood in Rhode Island. “Food Fight” by Matt Burroughs shows the colorful blur of a blue jay and a cardinal lacing into each other. Joyce was especially tickled by “The Trio,” with three white-tail deer displaying their black outer tails.
The museum also features two bird-watching stations (one overlooking a pond), plus small live mammals, birds, and reptiles. You can walk through a life-sized diorama showing the various habitats and wildlife found in the Chemung Valley area. Here the taxidermist’s art has been put to good use, so that you walk within reach of a white-tailed deer, gray squirrel, piletaed woodpecker, and more. Near a little hands-on area are mounted beavers and one of our relatively new neighbors, a coyote.
Outside there are over nine miles of trails, some on neighboring land in the hands of the Nature Conservancy. Hiking here one spring day I was delighted to come upon a hawthorn bush, with its elegant terrifying spikes. Down near the old Boyd’s Farm visitors’ center I used to find little piles of husks where squirrels or chipmunks had made themselves comfortable to tear through a pile of nuts or seeds.
Just a few minutes from Elmira, or the airport, or the mall, you can be wandering quiet farm-and-forest land atop Harris Hill. Tanglewood has been emphasizing the PACE of nature — Preservation, Awareness, Caring, and Education — for children and adults alike. “Naturally” they welcome donations and memberships. Tuesdays through Saturdays, except major holidays, they welcome visitors as well. Tanglewood Nature Center and Museum is one of our region’s hidden treasures.
