The Wine's the Thing
Mitch Kornfeld
5/30

Bully For You

A couple of weeks ago I went to a tasting at the World Trade Center, and while I was there one of my fellow tasters said something interesting about an aspect of the wine business that I really don't give much thought to, selling and promotion. 

"You can make the best wine in the world but it's no good if you can't sell any of it and no one knows about it," he said.

At the time we were at the table of Ternhaven Vineyards. It's one of the newest, and judging by their offerings at the tasting, one of the best wineries on the east end of Long Island, New York's newest and best wine producing region. It was the first time I tried their wines, probably because as you travel east on the north fork of the island Ternhaven is the last winery before you get to Orient Point and the Connecticut ferry. This unfortunate fact of geography surely doesn't help them sell wines to daytrippers from points west (including my fair city of a scant 8 Million), so some promotional efforts would be in order to get people out there to taste the wines. After that the wines will sell themselves. (Don't miss the 1997 Claret d'Alvah, a 55/35/10 Cab/Merlot/Cab Franc blend that will delight any fan of Bordeaux or other Cabernet-based wines. It's only $20.)

I'm not a fan of advertising in general, and if I never had to listen to or see another advertisement again I would survive quite nicely I am sure, but I can see in some situations, such as Ternhaven's, where promotion could be a good thing. In that spirit I would like to talk about a man who could promote wine as well as any one, and who passed away a few weeks ago. He was perhaps the most important man in the history of the New York State wine industry, and his story is worth noting, because among other reasons, it paralleled the growth of fine wine consumption in this country. He also made me laugh and smile many times, and what better praise can there be than "He made people happy?"

Walter Steven Taylor was the grandson of the founder of The Taylor Wine Company of Hammondsport, New York. The Taylor Wine Company is still around, making budget fortified wines (ports and sherries), but they used to be really big. In fact they were huge. They were one of the biggest names in American wine. Here are the opening lines from the entry for Taylor from the 1973 Signet Encyclopedia of Wine, by Rev. E. Frank Henriques: "This Taylor label is one of the best-known in all America -- in the dingiest, sorriest package liquor store where there is only one brand of table wine offered, it will invariably be Taylor's. It's a trusted name; it spells consistency and dependability to people who know nothing whatever about wines." In the early 70's I even used to see their wines on the shelves in California, which was a real case of bringing the coal to Newcastle. I say that because Taylor did not use Vitis Vinifera grapes to make their wines, they used native American varieties mostly of the species Vitis Labrusca (not to be confused with Lambrusco, a light Italian red). V.Vinifera is the true European wine grape. All the familiar varieties we know and love, from Albariño to Zinfandel, with every Pinot and Cabernet in between, all are Vinifera. The American varieties are what you find in grape juice, jams, and jellies. They make good jelly, but poor wines. To use the musical analogy, if Vinifera wines strike a chord, the native wines strike but a single note.

So back in the '60's, there was Walter S. Taylor, in his thirties, in his prime, working at the Taylor Wine Company, where he could have been President and Chairman of The Board if he didn't open his mouth, but what did he do? He opened his mouth. And what did he say? He said that those Labruscas really weren't making good wine, that using additives and preservatives the way they were wasn't the way to make good wine, and that they could and should be making better wine. This naturally infuriated members of The Board of Directors, who didn't think this was good for business, but there wasn't anything they could do about it because the Chairman of The Board was Walter's father. That is there wasn't anything they could do until one fateful day in the late 60's when Walter's father missed a Board meeting and the Board summarily dismissed Mr. Walter S. Taylor. 

Walter S., never being one to take things lying down, opened his own winery right up the road and went into direct competition with Taylor. The name he chose for his winery was Bully Hill, the name of the Taylor homestead, where he lived, and the name of the original estate started by his grandfather. The main difference between Bully Hill wines and Taylor wines was in the species of grapevines they used. Bully Hill did not use any native species, only hybrids.

Hybrid vines, or French-American hybrids as they are often referred to, are, as you would expect, crosses between Vinifera and American species such as Labrusca. The idea behind them is to combine the cold-hardiness of the natives with the wine quality of Viniferas. The hybrids can never truly attain the same quality of pure Viniferas, but sometimes they can get surprisingly close. In particular Seyval Blanc, "The Queen of the hybrids," makes a very good white wine. It has good body, plenty of flavor, is inexpensive, and makes a good sparkling wine as well as a still wine. It's sort of a poor man's Chardonnay. Look for Seyvals from (naturally) Bully Hill, Glenora, and Wagner, all from the Finger Lakes region (these are the largest Finger lakes producers), and Clinton Vineyards, from the Hudson Valley. Bully Hill and Clinton Vineyards make still and sparkling versions. (If you were wondering, Clinton Vineyards is in Clinton Corners N.Y. and has nothing to do with Arkansas.)

So back at the Bully Hill estate, Walter Taylor was producing his Seyval Blancs, Baco Noirs, and a dizzying array of proprietary red, white, and rosés. (Proprietary just means they made up a name for a blend. There are many out there, for example, Opus One, Phelps Insignia, Ravenswood Icon, Niebaum-Coppola Rubicon, Bedell Cupola, etc.) The label in those days (late 60's-early 70's) as I recall, was a light brown-beige and had a nice antique woodcut of a grapevine. Under it was the name of the grape/wine, and sometimes a vintage year, and a statement that read just about like this: "Bully Hill Vineyards, Walter S. Taylor Proprietor. Produced at the original Taylor Estate." Needless to say Walter's old buddies on the Taylor Board of Directors were not amused by the label, so one day in the early 70's when Taylor Sr. was absent, they sued Walter S. for trademark infringement. 

Well, Walter S. made a big thing out of getting sued. He said, loudly and publicly and often, that everything on his label was true, which it was, and that the important issue was that he was using his own name, and what were they going to do, take away his name?

To tell you the truth when I first saw those labels I detected a definite whiff of trademark infringement, so I wasn't really surprised when I found out that the Taylor Wine Co. won the suit and with it a court order for Walter S. to remove his name from the Bully Hill labels, which was exactly what he did. Did he re-design the labels? No. What he did do was invite 200 people over, handed black magic markers to all of them, and proceeded to have the word "Taylor" blacked out on every bottle in the place. The bottles went back into their cases and out to the distributors, restaurants, stores, and shelves for general sale. 

You don't have to ask if he received some press notices for that one. When the "new" label did come out it simply used ink instead of magic marker so it read "Bully Hill Vineyards, Walter S. (solid ink) Proprietor of the original (solid ink) Estate." It was generally seen as reading: "Walter S. Blank," and "Blank Estate." The label just called attention to itself and got even more press for Walter S. It also got him hauled into court again. Taylor sued him for not exactly complying with the spirit of the court order. By the time the case got into court Taylor had been bought out by Coca-Cola (that happened in 1977), so who do you think got more publicity by publicly, loudly, and often, portraying himself as the little guy up against the corporate behemoth that was, gasp, trying to take away his name?

That one, you could say, ended badly for Walter S., in that he lost the battle that was the case, but of course he won the publicity war. Losing meant he had to change the labels, and change them he did. The world got to see perhaps the most famous label ever made for a proprietary red, the "Love My Goat Red" label. There was a black and white line drawing of a billy goat, with the name of the wine and underneath it the elegantly phrased "They Got My Heritage, But They Couldn't Get My Goat." It just got you to pick up the bottle and to read the labels, front and back, maybe chuckle a little, maybe find out something about the wine, and maybe buy it. 

After that came my favorites, the fictitious ancestors. The labels would have a drawing of some old guy in a Revolutionary War dress uniform with a caption that said something like this: "General Jeremiah S. (Blank), Great-Great-Grandfather. First to clear the land." The drawings always had a Lone Ranger-type mask on the fictitious ancestors. There was a court order not to reveal the Taylor identity, and not revealed they were! The drawings, by the way, were done by a certain winery owner who in addition to his prodigious gifts for self-promotion was actually a pretty good artist. He was even the official artist for NASA for quite a while, which explains the "Space Shuttle Rosé." If you visit the winery you can see the originals of the labels in their original larger sizes, along with certificates of appreciation from NASA Administrators, and Chambers of Commerce, and the like. I remember one from the U.S. Secretary of State.

In the end Taylor slash Coca-Cola probably realized they had met their match and just gave up. Eventually Coke sold out to Seagram and the Taylor Wine Company faded to become just a shell of what it once was. It would be a bit of an oversimplification to say that Walter S. Taylor vanquished the Taylor Wine Company all by himself, and it would also be an oversimplification to say that the wines made from the hybrids vanquished the wines made from the natives all by themselves, even if the wines from the hybrids were superior, which they clearly were. There is plenty of truth in that but at the same time the natives and the hybrids were going up against a sea of Vinifera wines. The Californians, French, and Italians were (and are) formidable competitors who also knew a few things about promoting wine.

When he died at age sixty-nine Walter S. Taylor's Bully Hill was (is) a 250,000 case per year operation. That's pretty respectable by any standard. I'm sure that promotion and guile helped the success of Bully Hill but in the end the quality has to be in the bottle, and in the low and moderate price ranges value really has to be there too, so the wines have to have something going for them. Showing the visiting public a good time also helps, and visiting Bully Hill is nothing but a good time. It's a beautiful place in a beautiful area overlooking the third largest of the Finger Lakes (Keuka Lake. It's about 25miles/40 km. long, 1mile/1.6km wide, and "Y" shaped). When you drive up the hill and come upon the place the first thing you see is the sign, which reads: "Welcome to Bully Hill Vineyards, Walter S. "Blank" Proprietor. Home of the happy herd." You would think that there's fun to be had, and you'd be right.

Walter Taylor's Bully Hill has a nice niche in the market place with a quarter of a million cases. The hybrids that he championed leapfrogged past the native varieties in quality, but Vinifera wines really are better than the hybrids, though the hybrid wines are perfectly drinkable, are good values, and since you are not likely to drink the best possible wine you can every time you open a bottle they make good "everyday" wines. I remember going to an all-New York State wine tasting at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in 1987, and I heard some grumbling from behind the tables concerning Walter S. Taylor. Some people were upset, saying his insistence on the superiority of hybrids was hurting their efforts to promote their Vinifera wines. Things could have gotten nasty but then fate intervened. Ten years ago Walter Taylor was in a car accident in Florida and it left him quadriplegic. He had more important things to worry about than promoting the virtues of hybrid wines, and anyone who had a bone to pick with him just wouldn't attack him, so that fight never developed.

I was really saddened to hear that Walter S. Taylor had passed away. He was quite a guy and we are not going to see someone like him in the wine business again.

I highly recommend visiting the Finger Lakes. It's a beautiful and interesting area. When you go to the wineries you will find that the "average" winery offers a mix of hybrid and Vinifera-based wines. The Viniferas are represented by the usual cool weather white varieties, Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer, Reisling (the area is home to some of America's best), sometimes a Muscat, and once in a while the cool weather red, Pinot Noir. Among the hybrid whites, there's Seyval Blanc, which is so good everyone seems to make one, Cayuga, the local picnic wine, and a variety called Vignoles, sometimes known as Ravat (after the original clone, Ravat 51), that makes a good desert wine. Sometimes, when conditions are right, it shows up as an icewine. (The Vignoles grapes left out to be late harvest wines freeze on the vine. The grapes are crushed and the ice is thrown away, yielding a very rich, concentrated, and sweet wine. This is one of the few places where this happens.) 

The hybrid reds are represented by Baco Noir, Maréchal Foch, (named after the World War I Supreme Allied Commander and pronounced Fosh), Chelois Noir, Chambourcin, and there's often a proprietary red blend. There's quite a bit of rosé, as well as fortified wines, and some good sparklers. I think Chelois is the best hybrid red and some of the red blends are good. The best one I've come across is called Chateau Walter de Bully. You know who makes it. It has the weight of a top Beaujolais Cru though the flavors are different, and at five years old is amazingly good. I'm guessing it's about $15 or $16 these days.

Frank Prial the New York Times primary wine writer, who is one of my idols (he's done nearly a column a week for twenty five years, I don't know where he keeps getting ideas), did a column on Walter Taylor's passing. Prial said some nice things, and gave the rundown on the lawsuits, but as for the hybrid varieties championed by Walter S., he said they were ultimately transitional to Viniferas. I see what he means. I've already said that Vinifera wines are the better of the two but ultimately I have to disagree. People complain about homogenization of tastes and "the international style," which are really the same thing, and they call themselves "ABC drinkers," which stands for "anything but Chardonnay/Cabernet," as if those are the only two wines they are ever offered or ever see, yet they would dismiss out of hand a whole local industry that makes good wines that have taste and character, and are offered for very fair prices. 

Viniferas are hard to grow in the Finger Lakes region. You have to be close to the lakes, and it helps to be close to Seneca and Cayuga, the two largest that provide the most climate moderating influence. Even then the growers and wineries have to do some serious frost prevention work. If you don't have some choice property what are you supposed to do? There are thousands of wine grape varieties the world over, and there are interesting ones in many far-flung corners of the globe. We have some here about 250 miles from N.Y.C. Bully Hill is one winery in the region, and there are probably about fifty more. Someone is drinking all of those wines. Try a Seyval Blanc or a Late Harvest Vignoles, you just might like them. Some folks are even going to like sweet pink Catawba, one of the best native varieties. It sure beats drinking Coca-Cola.

Next week I will report on a very nice tasting of Long Island wines that happened 106 stories up. See you then.

© Mitch Kornfeld 2001 All rights reserved

Send your comments or questions to...
mitchk@unionsquarejournal.com


Previously by Mitch Kornfeld...

Big Euro Tasting, Part III -- Remembrance of Bouquets Past (05/17/01)

Big Euro Tasting, Part II -- Greater Burgundy (05/09/01)

Grand European Tasting (05/01/01)

King Cab, Part V -- Spain, Chile, Argentina, Australia (04/18/01)

King Cab, Part IV -- Italy (04/04/01)

King Cab, Part III -- California (03/21/01)

King Cab, Part II -- Bordeaux (03/07/01)

King Cab, Part I -- Some Basics (02/27/01)

For a Big Red, Think Petite (02/18/02)

Tannic Monsters from the ID (02/08/01)

New York Wine and Restaurant Deals (01/30/01)

Dad's Cardinal Zins and Other Clichés (01/20/01)

Some Basics for a Winter's Eve (01/12/01)

And if They're Spanish That's Fine (01/05/01)

Hello Carbon Dioxide (12/29/00)

Wines for Christmas (12/22/00)

Nouveau Beaujolais, Etc. (11/24/00)

Going to a Tasting 101 (12/01/00)