WritersShowcase

by Kenneth Lifshitz

Sung "Life is just a bowl of freakin cherries"

"Don't take it freakin seriously" -From a Peter Shickele joke on 5/4 time

Although the Willard State Hospital for The Chronic and Indigent Insane on Seneca Lake has been gone for over a decade, the Finger Lakes region as a whole itself retains, even today, a somewhat ambient air of schizophrenia. This may be partly due to the fact that as well as being a premier viticultural area, it was and is, the nursery of the New York public University system. The lakes themselves and the surrounding areas are bejeweled with excellent institutions of higher learning brimming with all manner and variety of intellectual as well as the more practical vineyard operations nearby that together, lend it an air of a modern day Jeffersonian Athenian agritopia.

The local inhabitants of this region had long ago learned the life skill of living side by side with these large numbers of highly educated, highly motivated, but ineluctably self involved people with whom they cannot converse at length on a level meaningful to both and who, if they did engage in such a narrowly defined discussion would, most likely be proved wrong almost all of the time in a particularly overbearing and superior fashion. The mere presence and proximity of such a panoply of diverse, unfocused intellectual energies, well beyond that found in most normal communities, could easily have driven anyone crazy hence, the propitious location of the Willard Insane Asylum here for well over a hundred years, its origins happily coinciding in fact with the birth of the University system.

It, the asylum, was originally, designed originally to accommodate mostly the residents of Seneca and Tompkins County and the surrounding area who, evidently having been driven insane by the abundance of dysfunctional geniuses alongside whom they were doomed to live, at least did not have to move, or at least not move far to live out their years in a productive manner. That eventually they learned to live and even thrive alongside these people whose obsessions might suddenly, without notice erupt, sending them and those in the vicinity hurtling off some intellectual or literal cliff or bridge, is not only a credit to them as individuals but to the foresight of Ezra Cornell who had the genius to couple the academic institution with an agricultural outreach program that benefited not only the overwhelmingly immediate agricultural community, but that of the State as a whole hence making the grafting of the more self involved and rococo research communities habits onto the glacial local manners more palatable to both. Consequently these two constituencies, forced to live in close proximity, have resorted to being polite and intellectually inoffensive not only as a social skill, but as a means of self-preservation, an essential tool to extricate themselves from conversations which suddenly seek to plumb unfamiliar depths. The intellectuals and academic mandarins, the most egregious of the pair at least as far as lack of social skills themselves, readily adopted this as a valuable compromise, eager to engender and cultivate even this false sense of camaraderie, mostly just so they can go to the 7-11 without it being an existential crisis. Another part of this bargain is that when the academics appear to be just way too crazy, the locals will just pretend not to notice. This second strategy seems to work equally well.

Nowhere was this unspoken social compact more evident than at the Geneva Agricultural Experiment Station. When Konstantin Frank arrived in the early fifties, he might have fit right in with this ‘cliffdiving-have-a-nice-day’ mentality, except for the fact that he was attempting to push everyone off with him and also, he was on the wrong side of the equation, an intellectual with manners burnished by more by Stalin’s rather than Amy Vanderbilt’s view of steak knife etiquette.

Cornell Cooperative Extension the aforementioned outreach agency of Cornell University is chartered to promote and improve agriculture in the State As such, Dr. Nelson Shaulis’, longtime head of the substation in Geneva’s, efforts fell well within this charter so long, it seemed, as it was pursuing an inoffensive, industry supportive paradigm that meshed with the local economics. It did not regard as part of its mission setting the economic climate for viticulture and hence the environment within which they were constrained to operate was to a large extent, predefined by the major economic concerns like the Taylor’s and the Welch’s, the major buyers for the region’s produce and whose aims, seemed consonant with the efforts and aims of the sub-station, but increasingly at odds with those of the individual growers. This common agenda circled around methods of increasing production of grapes suitable only for juice or jellies, on the available acreage from the time prohibition was lifted well into the 1970s.

So, within the overall predominant context of the structure of agriculture in the Finger Lakes region at that time, the sub-station’s policies seemed eminently sensible. Grape juice, not fine wine was the principal end-product for the region, with Taylor being the main buyer for relatively minor market in non-Concord juice, or grapes that would go into wine. It was widely accepted not only by the public, but by the growers as well, that high quality wines would never be produced in the region. The abundantly clear and indisputable reason was that the Labrusca grapes, which is the genus of grapes that were being exclusively cultivated here, were not suitable to making high quality wines. The only wines being produced from these grapes had either the word "Boone" or "Wild Irish" somewhere in the title and were usually prominently displayed only when someone in Hollywood decided to portray the contents of a recently overturned garbage pail inhabiting some anonymous alleyway with implied vomitus in the immediate vicinity.

Indeed, the use of the word "foxy" to characterize the Labrusca nose, is a somewhat euphemistic characterization of something for which the more accurate term, is probably coyote urine. And not surprisingly, it turns out that nobody who has not made a career of washing car windows with a shit stained rag, wants to drink something that has overtones of coyote urine, no matter how "foxy"it is. Because the wine made from Labrusca or native American varieties carried this heavy "nose", the reputation of New York wines, up until the 1980s, was second only to Buffalo’s reputation for cuisine (up until the advent of Wings).

In the 1950s post-McCarthy era, the society at large was still rank with this same unspoken social contract that was epitomized in microcosm in the University-non-University social relations, we have described in painful detail. At some undefinable point however, the social equilibrium was violated and the inertial tide of innocuousness, the infection of inoffensiveness eventually swept from the fringes of the institution, into the very heart of the great University itself. The vital and somewhat messy process of intellect innovation required a less somnolent and sterile incubating environment and so, as any organism might, the University took steps to counter this intrusion and it did so by hiring such eminently "avant garde" intellects such as Gore Vidal and others such as the economist Doug Dowd, intellectuals who could stand up to the milkshake wave of conformity.

To the administrators horror, instead of reversing the tsunami of innocuousness, to the administrators chagrin, under this constant influence, the ‘avant gardists’ themselves shortly came to adopt this protective coloration, becoming intellectually inoffensive themselves, resorting to sporting tweed jackets with elbow patches and pipes to simultaneously lend credence to their eccentricity (as job security), or, to obscure a sudden cornucopia of somewhat banal ideas, or, by adopting some more culturally offensive, but still intellectually banal intellectual strait jacket as a defense mechanism against overeager grad students once they were tenured. The flesh eating bacteria of intellectual conformity ate it’s way ever closer to the seat of ostensible intellectual ferment on the which Cornell based its reputation. The college, situated high above Cayuga’s waters seem not high enough as the waters of the patently self satisfied Ozzie and Harriet mentality increasingly through the late 50’s and early 60s lapped closer at its door. Retro-cross pollination, reverse lend lease, hence, who can really blame the ag school professors for not leading a revolucion de niveau mental, as the French would say, when Konstantin Frank showed up waving the red flag of viticultual heresy, when even Gore Vidal, the author of Lolita was busy teaching Dostoyevskii to undergraduates in turtlenecks. And because it is forced to in varying degrees by its charter, to be not just located in, but actually part of the local communities in the form of the Cooperative Extension, this cultural modus operandi first and most virulently infected the exposed organ, the Cooperative Extension, the nasal passage of Cornell University which became a ‘hotbed of conformity’, as the intellectuals located the heart of the University itself in Ithaca looked on in horror. Of course I say all this tongue in cheek. I think.

The point is that the Cornell Geneva agricultural sub-station, mostly under the guiding hand of the aforementioned, esteemed and well-loved Professor Nelson Shaulis, had been, until the mid 1960s focusing almost exclusively on the increasingly economically unviable cultivation of American hybrid and Concord grapes to supply the juice and jelly market just because that was the status quo. Because these exceptionally vigorous varieties are often hard to control in the vineyard, Dr. Shaulis’ major achievement in this period was to come up with a trellising system to both maximize production and sunlight exposure and to, at the same time manage vigor. This innovative system was known as the Geneva Double Curtain and it is still in use today, throughout the world in high vigor sites.

It was commonly accepted at that time, that the harsh New York winters precluded any Vinifera being grown here, limiting the viable varieties to the native cultivars and these, as we have stated, were not well suited for winemaking. Then, in 1977, Taylor the major buyer for the Labrusca grapes was acquired by Coca-Cola. This 'event' proved economically disastrous for the smaller grape farmers with whom Coke would no longer deal individually. But even before the acquisition by Coke, the industry had been in decline and by the late sixties already had been in deep trouble. Even for the larger producers able to deal with Welch’s or Taylor, the price for the grapes in the region had been driven further and further down over the decades making grape farming by then, a marginally profitable proposition anyway. It would take Konstantin Frank, an iconoclastic Ukrainian emigre with poor interpersonal skills and an idealistic, somewhat lonely French champagne expert, a seemingly unlikely pair, to eventually change this paradigm.

Vinifera vines comprise the traditional winemaking grape varieties used throughout Europe which had been nearly wiped out in the late 19^th century due to the introduction of Phylloxera, (a root louse native to the U.S. that had been unintentionally exported to Europe, devastating the European vineyards within a matter of a decade). Unlike the native American varieties, they must be uniformly grafted onto hardier root stocks to survive this insect’s predation, this being true not only in America but since the retro-cross pollination of the Phylloxera pest in Europe as well. Charles Fournier had arrived at Gold Seal in 1934, shortly after repeal of prohibition. He brought with him from France, for Gold Seal’s use, some of the recently developed French American hybrid grapes that were not only resistant to Phylloxera, but also far more cold hardy and disease resistant than the Vinifera grapes and much more suitable for wine than the native cultivars.

Konstantin Frank, who had been a grape cultivar researcher in Odessa, Ukraine moved to the area some 18 years after Fournier. While in the Ukraine, Frank had begun experiments on certain Vinifera varieties to determine relative suitability for cold climates. What he found there was that there was a great degree of variability in cold resistance, depending on the clonal character and cultivation techniques employed. Immediately after moving upstate, he began to replicate these trials and having proved to his satisfaction that Pinot Noir and Chardonnay could survive there, he boldly began proposing, (to anyone who would listen), that the growers in the area switch to the high quality European Vinifera clones. Like an unlikely, gruff Pied Piper he called on them to en masse abandon both the "foxy" Labrusca grapes. Further, he called the new French American wine hybrids introduced by Charles Fournier then working for Gold Seal, "toxic" to humans. These comments, coming as it were from an outsider, someone with no American university credentials or experience, his last job having been janitor in a Horn and Hardardt cafeteria in Manhattan were met with either disdain or defensiveness by the Geneva scientists. One might also have suspected that Fournier also might have taken offense since he was the one advocating the Hybrids as a solution to the economic strait jacket the growers were in, however, something had occurred that changed Fournier’s mind and caused Fournier, unlike Geneva, to come to look at Frank not as a threat but as an ally. The very same varieties Frank was now publicly warning people were toxic for human consumption, were the basis of Fournier’s Champagne business that he had developed almost single handedly at Gold Seal.

Therefore, to understand Fournier’s personal ‘revolucion de niveau mental’, a little background is in order. Gold Seal winery had been one of four vineyards to not only survive prohibition but to then successfully buck the trend of essentially abandoning the hope of making a premium product by either being or, signing over as a contracted supplier to Taylor or to the grape juice/jelly companies. By doing so, they had by the 1950s become one of the major players in the region, a group that at that time included also, Widmer and Great Western and the only one of the big three to set its sights on a nationally accepted wine product. Fournier’s goal was to make a world class champagne from locally grown grapes and in 1950 it seemed briefly that he had achieved this goal when Gold Seal Champagne Brut, made from these hybrids, took first prize at the California State Fair in a blind tasting. The next year California barred out of state entries from competing at the fair. The reason given for this was that ostensibly the hybrids, on which the New York entries had been based, represented another category of wine entirely and it was ‘not fair’ to judge them against the champagnes made with Vinifera. Ironically it was a similar blind tasting in France that first established California wines in a class comparable to French Wines.

Gold, Seal Widmer, Western and Taylor had been able to survive prohibition intact, by making ‘sacramental wines’ or converting temporarily to juice and jelly operations. Fournier had worked in France as winemaker for Clicquot-Ponsardin (Veuve-Cliquot) and was a master champagne maker and Gold Seal had essentially hired him to create a new industry for the area; Champagne and with Frank’s help, he was going to succeed.

Still, the problems appeared insurmountable even to this unlikely pair of expatriates. Vinifera are highly susceptible to mildew and black rot both of which thrive in the humid Northeast. But this was not the only issue. Vinifera vines are especially sensitive to rapid temperature changes. They are the blushing maidens of the grape world. Instead of fainting, if the temperatures reach rapid extremes they will fall prey to disease, or,-they will die, which is a drawback for an agricultural product. They therefore did not seem like a good bet on which to base an entire region’s economy. But Frank was aware that the deep glacial lakes that framed the Finger Lakes region (and from which it derives its name), served as essentially great heat sinks, mitigating the sharp fluctuations in temperature that are so deadly to the sensitive Vinifera, particularly to the sensitive graft unions, more deadly than even just the cold temperatures themselves,. These deeply gouged bodies of water never in living memory had frozen over.

Frank had begun his experiments back in Odessa an area of Southern Russia that has a similar climate to that of upstate New York and he had succeeded there albeit only with certain Pinot clones. Still, up until that point, all attempts to cultivate Vinifera going back to 1825 in New York State had failed and not just failed, but failed miserably. They no longer were even being attempted by the time Konstantin Frank arrived. Nevertheless Frank claimed, more than claimed, guaranteed, provided you used certain clones and followed certain cultural practices, Vinifera would survive, even flourish here. The growers in the area had been told all along by the experts in Geneva on no uncertain terms that Vinifera grapes could not be grown in the Finger lakes, that they would never survive the harsh winters and even if they did survive they would not produce enough tonnage to make their cultivation economically viable. This was, as it turned out, as the reader may suspect by now, a convenient fable.

Frank however promoted his ideas rather forcefully and vociferously (some say tactlessly), causing the Geneva substation scientists who had initially appeared to entertain his theories, perhaps initially somewhat in bemusement, eventually to regret this and turn against him when they realized he was abrasive and unabashedly serious about his theories and about his plan for replanting the entire Finger lakes region to Vinifera vines. He was rapidly becoming, at least in the minds of the Geneva scientists, the loud drunk that had gotten invited to the party to get it going, but shortly was proving a bore when the better heeled guests arrived. Frank was rapidly made aware by all the unspoken means that he was not fitting the model of laid back intellectual inoffensiveness, the cliffdivinghaveaniceday time honored system, the ‘sumum bonum’ of University-non-University relations. He seemed even not at first to understand that he was being merely tolerated, not encouraged, or more likely he was just ignoring these signals, in any event, he just barged ahead seemingly unaware of the increasing resentment he was generating particularly among those who considered themselves the ‘avant garde’ of the time, those who were advocating the planting of wine grapes, but of the hybrid varieties, most prominent among these being Charles Fournier of Gold Seal and Philip Wagner.

Though a doctor of enology in Russia, without American credentials, he was essentially unemployable by any major American academic institution. As far as Geneva was concerned, he was, based on his having worked at Horn and Hardardt’s, barely qualified to provide a recipe for macaroni and cheese let alone a blueprint for future of the entire grape industry in the second largest grape producing region in the U.S. They were no doubt by the mid 50’s hoping he would move to Pennsylvania, open an antique store and leave them alone.

Curiously, the Sub-Station itself through field trials had established that Vinifera was viable and could be grown in the area yet they refused to publicize this finding. Frank still regarded them, somewhere in the recesses of his convoluted brain just as misguided colleagues and it now became apparent to Frank that "being right" was indeed somewhat a less valuable commodity to these new colleagues than "being liked". He had finally discovered Finger Lakes cliff diving. But to him, the product of a state that was structured around social engineering, this was an inconceivably sad and intellectually feeble state of affairs, at least in the context of a surrounding intellectual community,--if he was right, it mattered little how offensive he was in making the point, but it was the social contract that ruled, that lent gravity and substance, binding the more abstract intellects and the locals, challenged only by the almost constant presence in their midst of the pale and persistent twin enemies to most residents of the Finger Lakes; liberals and snow.

Tact, it should be admitted, was not Frank’s strong point. But, he had spent his entire youth in an area where virtually all the farmland had been forcefully and (in the Ukraine), brutally) collectivized. In Frank’s mind, at least as far as grapes were concerned, Geneva sub-station, was essentially Stalin. They had (also, at least in his mind) the power essentially just to order everybody to convert to these varieties he advocated. When they refused even to entertain this idea, they were just being stubborn, worse, obstructionist bureaucrats! He had had experience with this type in Russia. Of course, this was not even a remotely true or fair characterization of the situation, but they did through Cornell Cooperative Extension exercise a great deal of influence and to some degree their policies were essentially mostly geared to perpetuating the self-actuating and self-fulfilling myths promulgated by the juice and jelly buyer cartels that emerged from prohibition,-- , but this did not by any stretch of the imagination translate directly into the exercise of any form of direct control over individual growers. Furthermore, even though the region’s industry was slowly being strangled by the juice and jelly buyer coops, they would never have risked the very raison d’etre by advocating an unproven, indeed, in their minds, a counter-proven, idea for which there was no clear market incentive or business model established. They were so convinced of this fact that they refused to believe even their own research let alone this interloper. Also there was the nagging question, if what Frank claimed was true, the question arose naturally, why wasn’t there a flourishing Vinifera industry already in the Ukraine, which apparently there was not?

Finally, probably to stop his annoying broadsides, the scientists at Geneva managed to get him a job at the experiment station,- as a janitor, the only position his American work experience would qualify him for. Instead of mollifying him this only encouraged him. Using his new position as a platform, mounting his bucket like a bully pulpit, Don Quixote with mop/sword in hard, he used his precarious position to more effectively pester people about his radical viticultural ideas. This effort, (which would have been no doubt made even more clumsy and bizarre due to his lack of English skills), was for obvious reasons increasingly ill-received, the attempt at noblesse oblige had failed. In any event, he was soon fired from his janitorial position and this led to a long standing and well publicized feud between Dr. Frank and the Cornell viticulture department at Geneva agricultural sub-station which some say, led to a short lived plan on the part of Cornell to find him a position at the only other major institution in the area they thought suitable to his personality, the aforementioned Willard State Hospital , the mental institution nearby on Seneca Lake and it was not a staff position they had in mind.

The sub-station personnel however, were not the only ones guilty of promoting self-serving propaganda, --Frank’s plan hinged partly, he thought, on his ability to convince people of the completely unproven but nevertheless novel theory that the French Hybrids that Charles Fournier had been advocating to replace the Labrusca grapes, were indeed toxic. By now, intellectually ‘persona-non-grata' as far as the Geneva scientists were concerned, his allegations were not taken seriously and evidently they thought this collateral agenda sufficiently ‘out there’ that, left to his own devices he would sabotage himself and discredit his pronouncements on Vinifera, so they did not bother to attack him further.

Also by now Frank having violated a basic tenet of the unspoken social contract; he had other things to worry besides being wrong. He had learned the hard way the fact that the clause that said you ignore the evident eccentricities applied only to the academics, -it did not apply in reverse. Still, as a kind of 'left-handed' acknowledgement of his Russian university credentials which by then they had been by then able to verify and recognizing that in trying to get him committed perhaps, they had overstepped their bounds a wee bit, he was afforded notice, as a courtesy, of local gatherings of grape growers sponsored by the experiment station. It was at one of these that he had occasion to meet Fournier, someone with whom, since he spoke French as well, he could at least attempt to be not just convincing but even charming and who was, it turned out (since Fournier was French and Frank spoke fluent French as well as German and Russian,-- just not English) was surprisingly receptive to his ideas.

Fournier, a Champagne expert, had been hired on by the forward looking Gold Seal to create a premium sparkling wine product. The astute Fournier had come to the bitter realization through his own experience that so long as his ‘Champagnes’ were made from hybrid grapes that, while they might actually be comparable, or even superior in quality to California champagnes, he was presented with an insurmountable marketing nightmare (something which Frank's dire pronouncements regarding hybrids were obviously not helping) and hence it probably would always be regarded more as an interesting oddity, than a world class wine. This second-class status was something he refused to accept. Fournier realized that Frank, a staunch advocate of the viability of the Pinot Noir grape, one of the classic components of Champagne, if correct, could be, at least partially, the solution to his problems. Thus in what was a remarkably shrewd maneuver in response to what have been could easily have been considered an uncalled for attack he chose to support Frank and use him to aid his attempts to create a sparkling wine using the classic French components. Using local Vinifera grapes would enable him to create a world-class product minus the marketing headache for Gold Seal. Even if partially successful, a Pinot Noir component in the Champagne would lend it enough credibility to be have to be considered in the Champagne category of any world class wine competition, not just as another ‘interesting’ sparkling wine. To then exclude it from the California competitions would be just obvious and blatant protectionism which would likely backfire. With this, the other main deterrent to producing high quality wines in New York, their naturally high acidity as compared to California grown grapes, could instead be turned to an advantage as the Champenois process traditionally requires grapes of unusually high acidity to stand up to the sparkling qualities, such as those found in the relatively northerly Champagne region.

Fournier decided for whatever reasons to back the dark horse and in 1953 took the risky step of creating a new position expressly for Frank at Gold Seal; director of vineyard research. While hiring Frank, given his reputation as an uncompromising iconoclast was a gamble, it seemed neither of the two possible extreme outcomes had initially occurred to Fournier; either that he would fail entirely or, that Vinifera would become the foundation of a new regionally based premium wine industry. The reason for this was probably not only because of the difficulties associated with growing it, but because there was no economic model to support it. He knew intuitively he would not fail entirely because in his home region of Champagne, the hardier varieties like Chardonnay and Pinot Gris routinely survived winter temperatures of below zero degrees Fahrenheit. By 1951 he knew enough of the Finger Lakes weather to surmise that these same varieties should survive there as well. His efforts were not directed at revolutionizing the industry all at once, he had a more limited and practical end; to create a sparkling wine in the French style with solid international credentials for Gold Seal (and possible Great Western, nominally their competitors).

He also had the advantage that the sparkling wines of the region already had made some market headway, as the objectionable "foxy" qualities of the Labrusca grapes were often somewhat masked by the natural carbonation. The reputation of Gold Seal as well as Great Western already rested on its sparkling wines but before the changeover to Vinifera they lacked the ‘apples to apples’ pedigree the world market demanded and so were doomed to a niche market. This was, Fournier realized, thanks to Frank, now a potentially winnable battle for them, from not only the viticultural standpoint, but also the marketing standpoint as well and one from which they might emerge as players not just on a regional or even a national but on a world stage.

Thus a successful collaboration was born, for Gold Seal and for Frank both and the first wines from Vitis Vinifera clones were released in 1960 and not surprisingly they shortly achieved widespread critical acclaim. Frank however, having a somewhat impatient temperament, having essentially successfully proven his theories, wished to broaden his focus and now moved on to form his own vineyard/winery, which he then did in 1962, called Vinifera Wine Cellars on Lake Keuka which today is operated by this son Willy and grandson, Fred under the brand names Dr. Frank’s and Salmon Run.

While the rocky relationship of Dr. Frank to Geneva has always been the subject of perennial partisan interpretation, what happened next is not open to interpretation. It was something that would profoundly affect the viability of Dr. Frank’s previously radical ideas, transforming them from essentially a novelty flagship status as a champagne component, into the driving engine for the entire region’s economy. In 1976, the New York State legislature adopted the farm home winery act. This allowed small wineries to sell wine directly to the public from their premises for the first time. This law, was a landfall to the industry, second only to the repeal of prohibition itself. Enabled by this new law to sell premium wines at premium prices, direct to the public, Geneva scientists watched in amazement as one grower after another in the area followed suit. On Gold Seal and Frank’s example they converted their acreage to the higher quality Vinifera grapes, telling Welch’s and Taylor to essentially ‘shove it’. Eventually the sub-station scientists realized that their world had changed irrevocably,- and mostly due to the janitor from Horn and Hardardts.

Today, the New York State wine industry still has not completely erased the unpleasant memory of the "foxy" aromatic and fortified concoctions that dominated production well up into the 1980’s under the Taylor and Constellation brands, but the wines now being produced in the Finger lakes and more recently Long Island rival those produced in California and France in reputation. Frank has long been vindicated and Geneva has 'refocused' on supporting the burgeoning quality wine industry of the region, based largely on Vinifera clones (although of late, some rather interesting hybrids have been reintroduced by Geneva).

The power of the myth of the outsider, the Anasazi-like ancient enemy, cannot be denied and it echoes powerfully inside the imagination and therefore outside the constraints of time and space. As my own saga, involving as it did a sire of a famous Weiner family unfolded above Cayuga lake; one on lake Seneca, the next lake over, one also concerning a famous Frank was coming to a close.-The ultimate chaos underlying the institutional numbing of life loomed large in the form of a smelly Willard Straight Hall for me and in the petty stratagems of the threat of incarceration in Willard State Hospital for Frank, which, no doubt also had its very own institutional stink. Both tales were punctuated with bouts of self-destructive behavior. However, no matter arrogant his personality, Frank patiently wrote line after line of grapes on the hills overlooking Lake Keuka, like Japanese Kanji practiced in a notebook, based more on faith and art than science. Like an echo filled with unspoken power walking across the hills, in the end, his story affected me and many others like me deeply. In both places, on both lakes, nothing would ever be the same again.

Rarely, but occasionally, some people succeed not in spite of the fact, but rather because they are their own worst enemies. You can call this bad or good luck, but Frank was certainly one of these. Just as the hunting clan displaced the agricultural calendar based priesthood of Chaco, he was someone who, as an outsider, came to point out, a new way just at a time when the old time honored methods had clearly failed. This was not a reflection on those methods so much as of the fact that serendipity can profoundly affect the fortunes of an entire people or group, (especially if there happens to be someone, like Charles Fournier, attuned to turning it to their own self interest and thus eager to be engaged in promoting it).

We have seen how in the twentieth century the Cornell sub-Station, either inadvertently, or thru policy, reinforced the local cultural predilections and prejudices to some degree as well in the same as the agricultural based priesthood at Chaco Canyon in the 10^th century had continued enforcing, or trying to enforce the increasingly outmoded agricultural knowledge of the Anasazi cliff dwellers, to preserve a hierarchy so intertwined with their culture and sense self worth that it had become an end in itself. Ironically that too became the stuff of legend as the Anasazi disappeared from history but not from memory. Consequently, we can see even today, that, Dr. Nelson Shaulis, who was almost certainly wrong about the future of the industry, but, who had the proper credentials and required laid back demeanor is still locally revered and beloved, particularly in the environs of the University (and somewhat less so in the community at large), as the father of the modern New York grape industry whereas Konstantin Frank is regarded still as an iconoclastic and almost biblically offensive outsider. However, while great achievement is undeniable, the fact that it not always coupled with an endearing personality, a fact people employed by a great University should have recognized, by now and which they have (somewhat grudgingly) done, is equally true.

Konstantin Frank's grandson, Fred was in charge of the tasting room when my friend Michael Begelman and I visited the Dr. Frank’s Wine Cellars in the summer of 1996. I actually knew him slightly, as a few years earlier I had bought some Cabernet Sauvignon vines from Fred just to see how they performed against the ones I had purchased from Herman Weimer. As we were sipping some barrel samples of the sweetish Russian varieties, Sereksia and Rkatsitelli, they were cultivating in non-commercial quantities, he related the following story about his Grandfather to us;

Because most of the available metal in Russia by 1945 had been recycled as munitions and armament, there were and had been for a while, no parts for tractor repairs available. Hence, in the years immediately following the war, few, if any, tractors in the Ukraine inventory were still functioning. Ukraine was and still is, the breadbasket of the Soviet Union. Twice before Russia had suffered an apocalyptic famine, once when the crop failed there, in the early 1920s and the second time due to Stalin’s policy of forced collectivization of the Kulak’s farms in 1929. Now, another such event appeared to be in the offing. In the summer and fall of 1945, there was again a critical need for grain and the grain stood in the fields but there was no way to bring the production in. Famine again loomed, this time ironically and cruelly in the face of a record crop that sat idle in the fields, but without sufficient equipment to harvest it.

There was at the time, a joint Russian/American Jewish agricultural cooperative organization, Agarest, who hearing of this dire situation, had managed with somewhat limited resources, to locate two old Ford tractors that could be donated. In fall of 1945 they had them shipped to the Ukraine to help the farmers this first year after the war, to bring in this crop. Dr. Frank at the time, though essentially an academic was appointed by the bureaucrat overseeing the collective farms in his area to be on the receiving end of this deal, this Jewish version of lend lease. So, when the tractors finally arrived, he immediately realized that they were too low on horsepower for the task at hand. Being firstly an innovator and secondly a mechanic he decided that if the two machines could be made to work together in tandem, that this would produce sufficient horsepower to make them useful to accomplish the grain harvest. However, instead of setting them up side by side in tandem like a team of horses, he shackled them together one ahead of the other, like a dogsled team. The result was that the first tractor abruptly and ignominiously pulled the second apart in two pieces rendering it comically (if not for the circumstances) useless. As Fred said, his grandfather had the distinction of destroying half the postwar Ukrainian tractor inventory in a single afternoon. In defense of Cornell, if they were aware of this story, it was not a particularly cogent argument for putting the future of the entire local wine industry in his hands.

Frank, was never much of a success as a businessman. His son, Willy inherited a winery that was essentially in shambles. However, if you look at earlier pictures of Konstantin Frank he appears kind of grumpy and disgruntled. In his later pictures he just looks astounded. "God Bless America", "Oh Say Can you See" Operaman. Bye, Bye.

Kenneth Lifshitz