Vignoles, the Honorary Vinifera
Anthony Road Wine Co.'s stewardship of New York's most interesting grape
Hardy yet finicky, Ravat 51 provides erratic yields regardless of growing season, often giving one year and withholding the next. Extremely cold tolerant, it survives harsh Finger Lakes winter without scare. Having some relation to native American vine species, it resists downy and powdery mildew prevalent in humid Finger Lakes summer. As autumn approaches though, so does it’s vulnerability. Every year with certainty its berries bloom with botrytis. Tight clusters cause ripening grapes to compete for space, sometimes crushing those at the core. Bunch rot ensues as botrytis enters and envelopes from inside and out.
The wines from Ravat 51 vines are sold as Vignoles, of course. Ravat 51 was named after French grape breeder J F Ravat who created the hybrid in the 1930s. The vine did last long in the vineyards of France, instead gaining ground in the northern regions of the United States where its attributes allowed it to thrive. The Ravat 51 moniker though, sounding too much like the science experiment it is, did not resonate with American consumers. The Finger Lakes Wine Grape Growers Association decided it needed a marketing makeover. Thus it was dubbed “Vignoles” by Bill Moffett, publisher of Eastern Grape Grower magazine, now printed as Vineyard and Winery Management. Its new name however did little to change its commercial appeal.
“It’s not an easy sell, Vignoles”, says Ann Martini. She then invites me for a cup of coffee, if only for a bit of warmth. It’s a brisk spring morning on the patio overlooking her vineyards at Anthony Road Wine Company. Swaddled in sweaters, she is a quintessential grandmother: small in stature and large in life. She ambles me through her decades growing grapes in the Finger Lakes, giggling all the way.
“It was all seat of the pants stuff” she laughs. Ann began her life in Penn Yan, New York in April 1973. She and her husband, John, were just starting a family when a friend who worked in farm credit banking suggested they make a life growing grapes up north. With no prior experience farming and two toddlers in tow, they replied “sure, why not?” That was all it took to depart Baltimore for the boondocks.
They got a repossessed trailer from the bank and settled it just off Anthony Road. Without electricity or plumbing for the first two months, they made use of candles and a nearby creek. In the meantime, they got on to planting grapes. They filled five acres with Marechal Foch before learning it would take three years to grow a commercially viable crop.
“We realized that we won’t get any money for the grapes,” Ann recalls. “I mean, this is how stupid we were! We wouldn’t get any money for the grapes for three years! So, John had to look for a job.”
John went to work for the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, leaving Ann to spend her weeks tending her young vines and young children. She was not alone however, as she found her new community eager to assist her endeavor. On spring mornings Ann and the mothers of Penn Yan loaded their children on the school bus before returning to Anthony Road to help trim and tie the vines. Summers saw many a Martini hoeing and mowing. With willing hands, Ann planted thirteen additional acres: five each of Ravat 51 and Seyval Blanc in 1974, and the remaining of Landot 4511 in 1975, thus establishing the Martini Family Vineyard.
As the fruits of their labor came each autumn, the Ann and John sold them to Taylor Wine Company. At the time, Taylor was one of the largest wineries in America, and the most prominent grape purchaser in the Finger Lakes. However, Taylor’s devolution began in 1977 when it was sold to The Coca-Cola Company. Subsequent sales and shuffling stripped Taylor of its identity and distanced it from the community that created it. Throughout the 1980’s Taylor bought fewer and fewer grapes from its independent growers, including the Martinis. Faced with the prospect of losing their livelihood, Ann and John opened Anthony Road Wine Company in September 1990.
By then, Ann had become a reputable vineyard manager. She was managing her neighbors’ vitis vinifera vines, harvesting them for Anthony Road. Her own vineyard was planted to hybrids, which had been sown at the behest of Taylor. As John asserts in Thomas Pellechia’s Over a Barrel: The Rise and Fall of New York’s Taylor Wine Company, “[Taylor] certainly had no feel for the future… ‘They produced sherries and ports by the gazillion gallons. … In their paternalistic mode [Taylor] did not want new growers to plant vinifera.’” The future, though, had arrived. The Martinis realized the success of Anthony Road depended on dry wines of Riesling, Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, and the like. So out came the Seyval, Foch, and Landot. The Ravat, however, had grown to entwine Ann’s heart strings.
Anthony Road takes the utmost care to harvest the Ravat vineyard by hand in several passes. “Everything that we get from over there is a gift” head winemaker Peter Becraft confides as he tells of its wines. For the ‘dry-ish’ Grey Series bottling they pick clean, unaffected fruit. In an exceptional season, such as 2020, the first bunches to be cut may actually be those taken by botrytis. This first pass of fuzzy fruit is destined for the Late Harvest label, making something of a misnomer. In not-so-exceptional years, meaning most in the Finger Lakes, the picking crew meticulously trim the vines of sour rot—bunches which are affected by botrytis before achieving adequate ripeness—about a week before each pass for the noble. Some portion of noble rot will make it into the semi-dry flagship bottling, and some will be held for Late Harvest. In rare vintages, a Martini-Becraft Selection is made from only the finest botrytised berrys.
Vignoles may not be an easy sell, but not for lack of character. The wines smack you in the mouth with a kaleidoscope of flavor. Drier interpretations can bear alcohol to give you what for and acidity to tear you a new one. This may be inevitable as Peter Becraft explains “it is not uncommon as we are heading into September that Total Acidity for Vignoles is as high as Brix.” With Brix that can reach the upper twenties while still carrying grams per liter of acidity in the low teens, it is a deft hand that dares toward dryness. Vignoles’s nature instead makes it an ideal candidate for sensually sweet expressions. As I sampled a 2020 destined for Martini-Becraft Selection, I felt the liquid balance upwards of 250 grams per liter of residual sugar on a tightrope of acidity, each sip another subtle step across my palate.
Vignoles holds such unique potential that the Martinis have nurtured it for nearly half a century on its own roots. “It has a future with us, although I don’t make those decisions anymore” Ann affirms with some hesitancy. Her son, Peter Martini, is now the Vineyard Manager at Anthony Road, taking over from his mother in 2000. Ann regrets that under his stewardship, “they ripped some out, and I just stood there and cried, and I said ‘you can’t do this.’”
At least one Peter agrees with her, as Becraft confesses that “there is a group of us that like to give Vignoles honorary vinifera status.” Vinifera or not, Vignoles is finally receiving recognition. “If I have people from the wine industry, no matter where they are coming from, whether winemakers, writers, from wine shops or restaurants, they are always bringing Vignoles back,” he continues. “Because this is the new discovery. This is the one they want to taste their friends on. This is the spice from the New World.”
Bibliography
Becraft, Peter. Interview. By Nicolas Capron-Manieux. 18 June 2021.
Martini, Ann. Interview. By Nicolas Capron-Manieux. 16 June 2021.
Martini, John. Interview. By Nicolas Capron-Manieux. 26 June 2021.
McKee, Linda Jones. “Hope Merletti Passes Away in New York”. Wine Business. 24 August 2020. Accessed 26 June 2021. https://www.winebusiness.com/news/?go=getArticle&dataId=235553.
Pellechia, Thomas. Over a Barrel. Albany: Excelsior Editions, 2015.
Robinson, Jancis, Julia Harding, and José Vouillamoz. Wine Grapes. New York: Harper Collins, 2012.