I had some very nice wine with dinner last night. Nothing fancy, but more enjoyable than a lot of snootier bottles. It was not expensive wine -- I got it at Wegman's, and it comes with change for a tenner. Most wine snobs wouldn't touch the stuff, and if they tried to export it to the EU, it would probaby have to be labeled "salad dressing ingredient" or the like. Even if they kept the picture of the goat on the label. New York State wine gets not respect.
But this bottle, and the winery that made it, has a long story behind it. It touches upon practically the whole history of American winemaking. The winery is Bully Hill Vineyards, and they've been making Goat White since their founding over four decades ago. The goat on the bottle was drawn by winery founder Walter S. Taylor. After he lost a landmark lawsuit that prohibited him from using the name "Taylor" anywhere on his labels, even to sign his artwork, he looked at an animal in his barn and and it inspired his slogan, ''They Have My Name and My Heritage, but They Didn't Get My Goat.''
Cheap wine is better now than it was in the 1970s. While the wealthy spend more and more on rare collector's bottles of famouse French names, the price of the stuff people actually drink has not kept up with inflation. In part this is because there are many more wine-making areas than there used to be, and because they're learning a lesson the French figured out centuries ago -- best results come from growing the right grapes for the location. In 1972, a really cheap bottle of plonk (not fortified wino stuff, but cheap table wine) would cost maybe $2/bottle. That might be from California's Central Valley (not good-quality wine country, but productive) or Bulgaria. Today a bottle of Trader Joe's two-buck-Chuck ($3 here in Massachusetts) is usually drinkable, for the equivalent of less than a dollar in 1972 terms.
But in 1972, American wine-making was mostly concentrated in only two states, California and New York (though Oregon and Washington were getting into the act). California was striving for respectability. Napa Valley made some very good, high-priced wines. They grew the great grapes of Europe, vitis vinifera varieties, though often in too hot a climate for the varieties they chose. And they grew a lot of cheap plonk.
New York was less pretentious. Its wine country was the Finger Lakes region, and they mostly grew vitis labrusca, the native American "fox" grape. Labrusca gets no respect, for good reason. It is a common roadside weed here in the northeast. Properly pruned, it is very producive, but the tart "grapey" flavor makes a better jam than wine. It is a flavor largely associated with kosher wines, because many Jewish immigrants started wineries in New York City and used the cheap Concord grapes grown upstate. Concord is a labrusca variety bred in the Massachusetts town of the same name by Ephraim Bull. It's better than the wild grape vines that climb trees and fences.
For most of the 20th century, Finger Lakes vineyards mostly grew labrusca grapes. It used to be assumed that vinifera just couldn't grow there. Vinifera can be finicky about cold winters. And vinifera roots can't survive the grape louse, phylloxera, that harmlessly infests labrusca. Plant vinifera in labrusca country and it dies. The great vineyards of France were dying off in the 1870s after imported American vines introduced phylloxera. The solution was to graft vinifera shoots on top of labrusca roots. Most European and California vineyards are now grafted. It doesn't really impact the flavor, though new wine-producing areas often brag about having ungrafted vinifera vines. Most New York State vineyardists didn't graft, though, they just grew labrusca varieties, both red and white.
Another approach, begun around a century ago, is to cross-breed labrusca and vinifera. These French-American hybrid grapes tend to be a little "foxy", but nothing like their American ancestors, and they can be extremely hardy. Canadian wine is mostly hybrid. I think English wine is too, which is leading to problems with EU rules. The best hybrid wines are very enjoyable, though -- not something a snob or critic would like, but very good plonk.
Cut to Finger Lakes, 1970s. One of the biggest brands of New York State wine was Taylor. It was mstly labrusca, cheap table wine that appealed to locals and New York metro-area folks weaned on it. The Taylor Wine Company had been founded in 1880 in Hammodsport, but had moved to a bigger faciliity. The founder's grandson, Walter S. Taylor, had joined the firm. Walter was a New York wine snob, which is sort of an oxymoron -- he railed against "tank car wine" blended with cheap California grape juice. Many people probably would have considered it an improvement, but Finger Lakes folk liked their native wine. Walter thought New York State could grow better wine with hybrids.
Walter didn't last long at the family firm. After a couple of years there, they fired him. He bought his grandfather's original vineyard and started Bully Hill there. He put a pink tank car there to poke fun at tank car wine, which he said had no more place in a New York vineyard than a pink elephant. He planted hybrid grapes, and his products were a cut above Taylor Wine's. His labels said "Walter S. Taylor" on them, and he apparently let people know that he considered his winery to be the true Taylor Wines.
Corporate intrigue time: In 1977, Coca-Cola Co. bought Taylor Wine Co. And they immediately slapped an injunction on Bully Hill."In short order, a federal court judge enjoined him from just about everything but wearing his farmer's overalls." Most serious of all: he could no longer use the Taylor name on any of his wines.Walter''s label drawings were then signed "Walter S." [black box]. There was no doubt a bit of what we now know as the Streisand Effect -- the publicity from the case let more people know that Walter Taylor was the man behind Bully HIll. And Walter was good at publicity. When a further injunction required him to turn in some additional materials, he hauled them in a manure spreader, with a veritable parade of supporters.
Coca-Cola was building a wine empire by buying up established brands. They thought that they could prosper in wine by building scale, not worrying too much about quality. Thus they wanted widely-advertised brands. Since Taylor's New York wine didn't really have much appeal outside of the northeast, they introduced the Taylor California Cellars brand. It was as far from the old family winery as you could get. It was the brand, not the wine, they wanted. Walter, in the meantime, continued to grow Bully Hill as what might be called a semi-premium brand. It's pretty big for a New York winery, but hardly a national brand.
Coke, however, didn't stick with it. In 1983 they sold their wine operation to Seagram's, who in turn sold its wine operations in 1987. The wine industry was consoidating. After some bankruptcies and financial maneuvering, a huge collection of wine brands has ended up under the control of one firm, Constellation Brands. Constellation's holdings include wine, beer, and spirits. It sells the high-end Robert Mondavi wines from Napa, Mouton Cadet from France, and dozens of other brands, Even Manischewicz wine, which licenses the iconic brand from the kosher food company.
But if you visit Constellation's site, and look at the dozens of labels they own, you won't see Taylor displayed with the others. You have to click on "Additional U.S. Wines" where they list a few brands that "have availability limited mainly to their region of origin". On that list are Paul Masson, which famously sold no wine before its time (the winery opened at 10 AM) and Taylor New York. What was once considered the most famous wine brand in the country is now an after-thought. Walter S. Taylor died in 2001, but his widow carries on the Bully Hill business. Constellation is not quite so touchy about the name, it seems -- the label now gives the winery's address, Greyton H. Taylor Memorial Drive. But then how could a company be enjoined against giving their address, even if the street was named for Walter's father?
To be sure, the hybrid grapes that Walter S. Taylor favored are no longer seen as New York's salvation. Finger Lakes growers have learned to grow vinifera, and many do, though they also product labrusca to satiate the local taste for it. Bully Hill makes a wide range of wines, some labrusca, some hybrid, some cold-climate vinifera (Riesling and Chardonnay do well in New York). And the Finger Lakes are no longer the only major New York State wine region -- Hudson Valley vineyards (premium vinifera) are coming on strong, and the potato fields of eastern Long Island are giving way to high-end grapes. Pretty much every state now produces some wine, and countries that were not known as wine producers in 1972, like Chile and Australia, are now major producers of quite decent wine. Big finance-driven companies control a lot of the distribution and mass market brands but little guys still carve out there niche, often, like BullyHill, abetted by vineyard tourism.
So raise up a glass of the small-maker wine of your choice and drink to the memory of the man who wouldn't let them get his goat.