Virginia Dare wines gain popularity from coast to coast

North Carolina’s Virginia Dare brands of sweet wines, made from native scuppernong grapes grown on Roanoke Island and surrounding areas, developed a national following in the early 1900s. 

Soon, demand exceeded supply. Virginia Dare winemaker Paul Garrett innovated by blending the native scuppernongs with grapes from New York and California, according to North Carolina historian William Stevens Powell.

Garrett braced for the effects of Prohibition by opening new facilities outside of North Carolina. He purchased Mission Winery in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., in 1910. 

“By 1911, the winery was in full production with more than 750 acres of vineyards. Inside the winery were the large redwood tanks, some holding 52,000 gallons, in which the grape juice was stored and fermented in the old tradition,” reported John Earl, creator of The Desert Way blog site. 

During the Prohibition years, “sacramental wines” could be legally made, under license. Garrett was an Episcopalian, so he generously gave Virginia Dare wine for the use of the church,” Powell commented. 

Wine could also be prescribed by pharmacists as “medicine” during Prohibition. The Virginia Dare line of “wine tonics” promised medicinal benefits…with a 20% alcohol content to boot. 

Diversification was another strategy employed by Garrett, as he created a “dealcoholized Virginia Dare wine-like beverage, to which consumers might add their own alcohol,” Powell added. 

Perhaps, Garrett’s most brilliant undertaking, though, was the production and marketing of a “superb grape syrup, under the name ‘Vine-Glo,’ with which purchasers could make their own wine,” Powell said. 

TIME Magazine reported in 1928: “Virginia Dare Vineyards promised to ship a grape juice that would ferment into champagne in the home and thus be quite legal. A client is supplied with a keg of nonalcoholic concentrate, which Vine-Glo agents put down in his cellar. They dilute it, tend it for 60 days. By then it becomes wine of about 15% alcoholic content.” 

With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, Garrett ensured that Virginia Dare brands were available in every “wet state.” He pioneered the singing radio commercial: “Say it again…Virginia Dare.”

 

After Frank Garrett died in 1940, Howard C. Paulsen and Llewellyn Barden became the key players to carry Garrett & Company forward. In 1945, they acquired Secondo Guasti’s Italian Vineyard Company, located at Ontario, Calif. – the largest vineyard in the world, with 5,000 acres. 

Authors George Walker and John Peragine said the “climate challenges” associated with the Santa Ana winds took their toll. 

Essentially, Garrett and Company fought the sandstorms…and the sandstorms won. 

Grape growing in the Cucamonga Valley progressively declined, and eventually the whole industry collapsed in this region by the early 1960s. 

Virginia Dare wines, however, have made a comeback. In 2021, Virginia Dare wines became the newest members of Delicato Family Wines, based in Napa, Calif. 

Industry analysts said that “Delicato is one of the fastest growing U.S. wine suppliers, ranking in the top five across all price segments.” 

Gaspare Indelicato, founder and patriarch of Delicato Vineyards, was a native of Sicily, Italy. He planted several varieties of grapes in 1924 on a 68-acre site near Manteca in California’s San Joaquin County. His partner was his brother-in-law, Sebastiano Luppino. 

In 1935, the two men decided to make their own wine. They Americanized their names – Gaspare became “Jasper” and Sebastiano became “Sam” – and launched the “Sam Jasper Winery” on a shoestring. 

Today, Chris Indelicato, grandson of “Jasper,” is president of the privately held company.

Durham is ‘The Bull City’ for good reasons

How did Durham, N.C., come to be “The Bull City?” Which story shall both “pass the muster” and “cut the mustard?”

The Durham city flag was created by designer Al Nichols to communicate the “New Spirit” of Durham. The seven stars are symbolic of: the arts; commerce and industry; education; medicine; human relations; sports and recreation; and the preservation of Durham’s rich heritage. 

John Ruffin Green’s tobacco company in “Durhamville” (as the community was known during the Civil War years) was one of the few southern business enterprises to survive the conflict.

Historians say this was because soldiers from “both sides” were partial to Green’s tobacco products. By war’s end in 1865, Green was receiving “orders” from war veterans who had returned to their homes and were craving his “Best Flavored Spanish Smoking Tobacco.”

One day while Green was dining at a restaurant in nearby Hillsborough with his friend James Young Whitted, the discussion focused on the need for a “better brand.” 

They came up with “Genuine Durham Smoking Tobacco,” with the image of a bull – similar to the one on the Colman’s Mustard container that was positioned on their table…right before their eyes.

 

(Based in Norwich in Norfolk County, England, Colman’s was a family-owned business that was formed in 1814. Its third generation president Jeremiah James Colman came up with the idea in 1855 to use the head of a bull on the company’s logo.) 

Green registered his new “Bull Durham” trademark in 1866. Conveniently, Durham is a breed of Shorthorn cattle originating in northeastern England. So, it all tied in quite nicely.

 

To expand his business to meet demand, Green needed partners. He brought in two fellows who had been peddling his tobacco throughout the rural areas of eastern North Carolina by team and wagon – William Thomas Blackwell and James R. Day. 

After Green died in 1869, Blackwell and Day purchased the business and renamed it as W. T. Blackwell and Company. Tobacco became Durham’s foremost industry. 

When minor league baseball came to Durham 120 years ago, the team’s nickname was the “Tobacconists.” Later, the club became the “Durham Bulls.” 

Durham became internationally recognized…and famous…following the 1988 release of the movie “Bull Durham,” starring Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon. Costner’s character was a “grizzled minor-leaguer, a switch-hitting catcher named Crash Davis.”

 

A real Durham Bull player from its 1948 roster was Lawrence Columbus “Crash” Davis. He was a gritty middle infielder from Gastonia, N.C. 

Davis’ first nickname was “Squeaky,” a reflection of his high-pitched voice. He changed it to “Dynamite” when he started playing American Legion ball. 

Then, in one game, after colliding with an outfielder while chasing a short fly ball, Davis confessed: “The ‘Dynamite’ exploded, and I was ‘Crash’ ever since.” 

Davis went on to play baseball at Duke University from 1938-40. As a right-handed hitter, he posted a collegiate career batting average of .359. 

Connie Mack, the Philadelphia Athletics’ manager, signed Davis right out of college. Davis played three seasons at the major league level, batting .230, before being drafted into the military service during World War II.

 

After the war, the Athletics told Davis that “he’d lost a step” and cut him in spring training. Davis spent the rest of his career – seven years – in the minors. 

His best season was in 1948, with the Durham Bulls. Crash Davis hit .315 and smacked 50 doubles. Those doubles put him in the Carolina League record book. 

Film director Ron Shelton just happened to thumb through that “record book” when doing research for the “Bull Durham.” He paused when he came across the name “Crash Davis.” Perfect. 

When asked to give consent to use his name in the film, Crash Davis replied: “Only if the boy gets the girl.” Check.

Did Roanoke Island colony fall prey to foul play?

Was there a conspiracy to sabotage Sir Walter Raleigh’s expeditions in the late 1580s that attempted to build an English colony in the New World?

 

Anthropologist and author Lee Miller believes so. She has suggested that the “lost colonists” from Roanoke Island, N.C., were the political pawns caught up in the “black web” of a power play in London.

 

Miller thinks the primary saboteur was Queen Elizabeth’s secretary of state Sir Francis Walsingham, who also was the crown’s “spymaster.” He was a clever and devious chap, fluent in French and Italian languages, who built an intelligence network of more than 50 agents, working primarily in Europe.

 

Miller said many indicators point to Walsingham as the kingpin of conspirators within the royal court who desperately “wanted to bring down Raleigh, the Queen’s golden boy. Raleigh stood to gain great wealth, as he was awarded a royal patent to all land he could settle in the New World,” wrote By Dale Keiger, the former editor of Johns Hopkins University’s alumni magazine. 

(Miller earned her master’s degree in anthropology in 1987 from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.) 

The importance of what happened at Roanoke Island with the “Lost Colony” is vitally important, she said. “This is the quintessential American story. This is where American history began. It didn’t begin at Jamestown or at Plymouth, it began here. It’s also America’s oldest murder mystery.” 

Walsingham, a smallish man with a swarthy complexion, habitually dressed in black. On the other hand, Raleigh, who was about 20 years younger, was described as “tall, dashing, debonair and flamboyant.” Was it a case of personal jealousy? 

Miller said a key figure in the plot against Raleigh was the Portuguese sea captain Simon Fernandes, who piloted John White’s 1587 voyage. 

Fernandes was supposed to transport the colonists to the Chesapeake Bay area, which Raleigh believed offered great potential for success. 

But first, there would be a pit stop at Roanoke Island to gather up the English soldiers who were left behind during a prior expedition. Obviously, Fernandes knew the way; he had sailed to Roanoke Island twice before, working for Raleigh. 

In 1587, however, Fernandes lollygagged around some in the West Indies before heading to Roanoke Island. The fleet finally got there in mid-July, too late to plant fields. Then, Fernandes announced that “this was the end of the line, folks. Everybody off.” 

He flat-out refused to take White’s party of 117 any farther north. Was this on direct order from Walsingham? 

Miller suggested that Fernandes purposefully dumped them where he knew their odds of survival were skimpy at best. 

Some historians have offered that Fernandes was in a hurry to discharge his passengers, so he could sail off to engage in piracy ahead of hurricane season. 

Keiger reported: “Were this true, Miller asks, why would Fernandes have spent 36 days anchored offshore of Roanoke Island, recaulking his ships and showing none of the urgency that supposedly prevented him from taking the colonists to their planned destination?” 

“And why, once he did depart, did he not hunt for prizes but instead make a beeline for England?” British journalist Alan Freer paints Sir Francis Walsingham as “a black spider at the center of a great web.” Walsingham died in 1590, at age 58, after a long battle with cancer.

Raleigh made news in 1591, when he secretly married Elizabeth “Bess” Throckmorton, who was a lady-in-waiting, a royal attendant of Queen Elizabeth. The queen was furious and imprisoned them both.

Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh

Bess Throckmorton

Here’s more commonality between Carteret and Pasquotank

What else do we need to learn about Pasquotank County, N.C., which is so far north that it almost touches the Virginia border? 

It’s important information, because Carteret and Pasquotank counties are now linked within the boundaries of the state senate’s new, far-flung 1st District.

How about this for starters? Both Carteret and Pasquotank host U.S. Coast Guard facilities, bases and stations. Furthermore, both counties share great affection and a deep respect for their rich Coast Guard heritage…and proudly welcome Coast Guard families into their midst, benefiting from their involvement and participation in local affairs and activities. 

Elizabeth City, the county seat of Pasquotank City, has earned distinction as an official “Coast Guard City.” Similarly, Carteret County, holds equal status as an official “Coast Guard Community.”

(Since Carteret County has Coast Guard units at Fort Macon/Atlantic Beach and at Emerald Isle, it made perfect sense for the county government here, working in partnership with the Carteret County Chamber of Commerce, to apply for the “community” classification.) 

To date, only 29 U.S. municipalities/counties have been approved by the U.S. Congress to be designated as Coast Guard “places.” Wilmington, N.C., is included on this list. 

Elizabeth City has received national acclaim for its “Rose Buddies” tradition that started in 1983 and has put the city on the map as the “Harbor of Hospitality.”

 

One Sunday after church, two of the city’s most extroverted residents – Fred Fearing and Joe Kramer – decided to host an impromptu wine and cheese party for boaters visiting the recently completed docks at Mariners’ Wharf. 

Kramer clipped roses from his yard, and Fearing collected wine, cheese, crackers and cups. They organized a boaters’ reception on the Pasquotank River waterfront for 17 transient boaters who had docked that day in Elizabeth City. Most were moving up or down the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway). 

This was the start of a popular local tradition, and the volunteer harbor ambassadors – both men and women – named themselves the “Rose Buddies.” 

The Kramer family transferred Joe’s rose bushes to fertile land adjacent to Mariners’ Wharf after he died, so the pubic could enjoy the beautiful blossoms. 

Carteret County merchants are committed and dedicated to extending the “hand of hospitality”…but how do we capitalize? This is an opportunity that needs to be noodled.

  

Museum of the Albemarle

 Carteret and Pasquotank counties have “sister state museums” that are units of the N.C. Museum of History – the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City and the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort. 

Elizabeth City State University (ECSU), founded in 1891 as a “normal school for African-Americans,” is now part of the 16-campus consolidated University of North Carolina System. More than 2,000 students are currently enrolled at ECSU.

 

Offering the only four-year collegiate aviation education program in the state, the ECSU School of Science, Aviation, Health and Technology is highly regarded. The program includes a fleet of 10 aircraft for flight training. 

Additionally, the university and Coast Guard are partnering to enable upper classmen to pursue careers within the Coast Guard. They can directly enter officer candidate school upon graduation. 

College of The Albemarle (COA), established in 1961 in Elizabeth City, claims to be “the first comprehensive community college in North Carolina,” and now also operates three branches across the region.

 

(Just so you know…“all things Albemarle” are named after George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, one of the original eight Lords Proprietors of Carolina, appointed in 1663 by King Charles II.)

Pasquotank is yet another member of new senate district

Pasquotank County in northeastern North Carolina has a distinct geography. The county is nearly and neatly boxed in by the Albemarle Sound, the Pasquotank and Little rivers and the Great Dismal Swamp. 

Pasquotank is one of eight counties that make up the state senate’s new 1st District. Others are Carteret, Pamlico, Hyde, Dare, Perquimans, Chowan and Washington. Carteret is the largest, with a population of about 69,580. Pasquotank is second in size, with about 40,550 residents.

 

Almost 18,000 people reside in Elizabeth City, the county seat. “E-City” is the largest city in the Albemarle Sound region. 

The community was once known as Redding’s-on-the-Narrows but became Elizabeth Town in 1794 and then Elizabeth City in 1801. It was named for Elizabeth “Betsy” Taylor Relfe, who owned a swanky tavern in town. 

The Pasquotank River was the first waterway in America to receive an “Underground Railroad Network to Freedom” designation from the U.S. National Park Service in 2004. 

The historical marker at Waterfront Park in Elizabeth City mentions that the Pasquotank River “was cited in 35 runaway slave advertisements between 1791 to 1840, indicating that slaves (‘freedom seekers’) escaped on vessels traveling north to free territory or south to the West Indies.”

 

The North Carolina Navy made a valiant effort to defend Elizabeth City from Union invasion during the Civil War at the Battle of Elizabeth City fought in 1862 on the Pasquotank River, according to Paul Branch, a ranger at Fort Macon State Park in Carteret County. 

He said that Confederate Capt. William Francis Lynch, commander of the scant “Mosquito Fleet” of five small ships, prepared his vessels for battle on Feb. 8, 1862, less than two miles below Elizabeth City at Cobb’s Point, site of a small earthen fort with four 32-pound canons.

 

Capt. Lynch

In addition, a schooner named Black Warrior, armed with two 32-pounders, was anchored as a floating battery on the opposite side of the river. 

A Union flotilla of 14 gunboats, commanded by Capt. Stephen Clegg Rowan, entered the picture. The scorecard gave a huge weaponry advantage to the Union – 40 guns to 11.

 

Capt. Rowan

Rowan launched his offensive on Feb. 10, 1862, ascending the river from the Albemarle Sound. The Union gunboats easily breezed by the fort and fired on the schooner, immediately disabling it. The “Mosquito Fleet” was swatted aside, no match for the Union ships of war. 

One Confederate steamer, however, “managed to escape upriver and attempted to enter the Dismal Swamp Canal to reach Norfolk, Va.,” Branch said. “Incredibly, as the vessel tried to enter the mouth of the canal, it was found to be two inches too wide to enter.” Ouch. 

Branch reported that “the losses in the unequal battle were light: two Union sailors killed and seven wounded; four Confederates killed and at least seven wounded.” 

Interestingly, Capt. Lynch was 60+ years old when he commanded the “Mosquito Fleet.” 

(He was quite a guy. Earlier, in 1847, Capt. Lynch had led an expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea in the Middle East. His crew of scientists proved that the Dead Sea was below sea level…by nearly 1,313 feet.) 

After the Civil War, a railroad line was built in 1881 from Norfolk through Elizabeth City and on to Hertford in Perquimans County and Edenton in Chowan County. 

At the time, Richard Benbury Creecy, a newspaper publisher in Elizabeth City, proclaimed the railroad promised prosperity, prosperity and more prosperity. 

We’ll have to see about that…next time.

John Harvey: N.C.’s ‘Father of the Revolution’

Robert Digges Wimberly Connor of Wilson, N.C., the original state archivist of North Carolina, wrote extensively about the contributions of John Harvey of Perquimans County as the “Father of the Revolution in North Carolina.”

 “The decade from 1765 to 1775 witnessed the revolt against the authority of Parliament, the inauguration of the Revolution and the overthrow of the royal government in North Carolina,” Connor said.

“The dominant figure in our history is John Harvey. As soon as he was old enough to understand such things, Master Harvey manifested a lively interest in colonial politics,” Connor wrote. “He was barely 21 when brought forward as a candidate for the General Assembly and elected in 1746.”

 

Robert Digges Wimberly Connor

“From that day till the day of his death 29 years later, he served continuously in the assembly, and gradually forged his way to the front until in 1766 he was elected speaker of the House of Commons, thus becoming the leader of the people in their contest with the Crown and its representative, the governor.” 

Routinely, John Harvey clashed with the colonial governor Josiah Martin, who had succeeded William Tryon in 1771. 

Connor said: “Martin was a man ill calculated to conduct an administration successfully even in ordinary times. Stubborn and tactless, obsequious to those in authority and overbearing to those under authority, he suddenly found himself in a position that required almost every quality of mind and character that he did not possess.”

 

Josiah Martin

“No worse selection could have been made at that time; the people of North Carolina were in no mood to brook the petty tyranny of a provincial governor, and Martin’s personality became one of the chief factors that drove men headlong into revolution and prepared the colony, first of all the colonies, to take a definite stand for independence.” 

“At the very outset of his administration the dull, inelastic mind of Martin came into sharp contrast with the vigorous intellect and determined spirit of John Harvey,” Connor asserted. 

On May 3, 1775, “under the clouds of a rapidly approaching revolution,” John Harvey, 50. “died after a very short illness, occasioned, it is said, by a fall from his horse.” 

Connor wrote: “Though (Harvey’s) strong hand was snatched from the helm at the most critical moment, nevertheless the Revolution moved on apace without a jar, without swerving an instant from its destined end.”

 

About two centuries later, another Perquimans County native emerged on the national scene…having a revolutionary effect on American professional sports. He was James Augustus Hunter, who became professional baseball’s first “modern era free agent” in 1974. 

You may know him as Hall of Famer Jim “Catfish” Hunter of Hertford. Hunter signed a pro contract after graduating from Perquimans County High School in 1964. He was “discovered” by North Carolinian Clyde Kluttz, a scout for the Kansas City Athletics. 

The Athletics’ (known simply as the A’s) team owner was Charlie Finley, who thought his 18-year-old pitcher needed a nickname.

 

Bob Ruegsegger, a freelance writer based in Virginia Beach, Va., said: “Finley decided his prized rookie would be Jim ‘Catfish’ Hunter.” 

“Finley fabricated a story: ‘You left home when you were 6. When your momma and daddy finally found you, you had landed two catfish, and you had a third one on the line. They’ve been calling you ‘Catfish’ ever since.” 

Hunter balked, but Finley said: “I just gave you $75,000,” (a reference to Hunter’s signing bonus). “Yes, sir. My name is ‘Catfish,’” Hunter conceded. 

Elizabethan Gardens is the new home of Virginia Dare

Visitors to the “Lost Colony” on Roanoke Island, N.C., should consider exploring the “history, mystery and fantasy” contained within the Elizabethan Gardens, an “English pleasure garden” that is part of the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site. 

In 1953, the Garden Club of North Carolina leased this site from the Roanoke Island Historical Association to establish a cultural attraction to enhance the value of the area and serve as a permanent memorial to Sir Walter Raleigh’s colonists who came from England in 1585-87.

 

Elizabethan Gardens features a statue of Virginia Dare as a young woman. She was the first child born to English colonists at Roanoke Island in 1587. 

“The poignant mystery surrounding the Lost Colony caught the imagination of Maria Louisa Lander (1826-1923) of Salem, Mass., a professional sculptor,” wrote John Buford, the marketing officer at Elizabethan Gardens.

 

Lander envisioned Virginia Dare as a revered princess within a blended society of native Croatoans and the lost colonists. 

Working in a studio in Rome, Italy, in the late 1850s, Lander used a large pillar of white marble from a quarry at Carrara in Tuscany. “After 14 months of labor, she completed her statue and placed it aboard a sailing vessel headed for Boston. The vessel encountered a severe storm off the coast of Spain and was wrecked, sending its cargo to the bottom,” Buford said. 

“Two years later, the ship’s cargo was salvaged, including the statue of Virginia Dare. Lander was forced to ‘buy back’ her statue, which she restored to its original beauty and exhibited in Boston.” 

Upon her death, Lander willed the Virginia Dare statue to the State of North Carolina. Someone in Raleigh thought it would be a good idea to pass the artwork along to “The Lost Colony” outdoor drama that was scheduled to open in 1937. 

The National Park Service (NPS) owned the property where the Waterside Theater was being built. NPS bureaucrats quashed that idea of displaying Virginia Dare’s statue on federal land, because “there was no authenticated record that Ms. Dare ever lived to maidenhood,” Buford said. 

“So, the statue remained in its shipping crate backstage at the theater until after World War II,” when Albert Quentin “Skipper” Bell, who was responsible for building the theater, decided the statue would look good on the Chapel Hill lawn of Paul Green, playwright of “The Lost Colony.” 

“Green never got around to erecting the statue on his estate,” Buford said. Green was more than happy to “regift” it to the Garden Club and plant Virginia Dare where she truly belonged – on Roanoke Island.

 

“Today, our ‘maiden of mystery’ stands in her own niche at the foot of an ancient live oak,” Buford said. “She gazes dreamily beyond the trees toward the softened surge of nearby Roanoke Sound.” 

Occasionally, a ghostly white female deer can be seen ducking in and out of the shadows on the island, as the hour approaches dusk. The doe is making her rounds to provide protection to the inhabitants. The animal is a central figure in the “Legend of Virginia Dare.” 

One of the most stunning paintings of Virginia Dare as a beautiful princess was created by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863-1930) of Philadelphia, Pa. His collection of 78 paintings, known as “the Pageant of a Nation,” is the largest series of American historical paintings by a single artist. 

Ferris painted Virginia Dare with long, curling auburn hair, wearing a typical Native American garment of the early 17th century.

Other images of Virginia Dare: