When people first learn about Martha’s Vineyard, they ask us some obvious questions, like, “Who was Martha?” and “So, where are the vineyards?”
After dancing around the first (not-so-easy) question, we go on to hem and haw at the second question. “Uh, well, I guess there used to be a place in West Tisbury called Chicāma Vineyards …”
Seriously, though. Where are the vineyards?
When English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold visited in 1602 upon his ship, Concord, he bestowed the name “Martha’s Vineyard” upon, well, Nomans. (The name was later transferred to its larger neighbor to the north.) Gosnold brought two chroniclers with him: John Brereton and Gabriel Archer, both of whom published detailed accounts of their monthlong exploration of our Island and its immediate neighbors.
Both Brereton and Archer were impressed by the abundant climbing plants on all the islands. Brereton, for example, described “such an incredible store of Vines, as well in the woody part of the Island, where they run upon every tree, as on the outward parts, that we could not go for treading upon them.”
But, curiously, nowhere in any of their lengthy accounts is the word “grape” mentioned. Did the word “vineyard” even suggest grapes, in 1602 parlance? What other vines are there?
Well, one of the most common native vines on Martha’s Vineyard is undoubtedly Toxicodendron radicans, known elsewhere in the country as “mercury” and “poison-creeper,” but around these parts, we call it “poison ivy.” William Huse penned this brief but instructional ode to T. radicans for the August 1900 issue of the bulletin Nature Study: “Leaves three, /Quickly flee.”
Gosnold’s chronicler Brereton wrote, too, of another native creeper they saw during their 1602 exploration of the islands: “In every island, and almost in every part of every island, are great store of ground nuts, 40 together on a string, some of them as big as hen’s eggs; they grow not two inches underground: the which nuts we found to be as good as potatoes.” The groundnut — Apios americana, “the wild potato-vine” — still grows here, especially in moist ground. It was once a popular food of both Wampanoag foragers and early English settlers, but it is difficult to find anyone today who has tasted them, boiled, roasted, or raw.
But Linsey Lee of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum has, at least in years past. The author of the 1975 book “Edible Wild Plants of Martha’s Vineyard,” Lee wrote me recently, “I used to gather it to eat, but it seemed to become increasingly scarce (crowded out by new roadside growth), and it is so beautiful in flower that I didn’t want to disturb it when I came across it. My memory is that it tasted fresh, crunchy, and sort of potato-like. Cross between a good cucumber and a potato.”
But in the end, the popular origin story of the “Vineyard” is probably correct: The “vines” Brereton and Archer referred to in 1602 were neither poison ivy nor groundnuts, but likely indeed our wild “fox-grapes,” Vitis labrusca — a species domesticated elsewhere in Massachusetts in 1849 as the Concord grape, of Welch’s jelly fame. “Vine,” it seems, was synonymous in 1602 with “grapevine.” It really was Martha’s grape vineyard, albeit a wild one. Elsewhere in Brereton’s writings he enumerates the useful “Fruits, Plants and Herbs” he found here, and one of the first he lists is “Vines, in more plenty than in France.” So probably fox grapes.
Wines made from wild Vitis labrusca or its Concord offspring are not very popular. (“Freaking horrible” is how one online reviewer put it. “You’ll get wonderful notes of acrid bile and Kool-Aid-style grape nose.”) So while there were certainly many backyard vintners on the Island over the centuries, there were never any attempts at a commercial wine vineyard.
It’s not that Vineyarders were teetotalers. Historian Charles Banks wrote of colonial Island life, “If drinking liquor can be called an amusement, it is certain that a considerable number of the people, from the clergy down to the serving-man, indulged their spare hours to an appreciable extent. Beer was brewed on the Island. There was a malt-house at Edgartown before 1700. The use of liquor was well-nigh universal in the 18th century.”
Then, in 1971, Catherine and George Mathiesen of West Tisbury opened Chicāma Vineyards, the first commercial vineyard on the Island — indeed, the first winery ever licensed to sell wine in Massachusetts. (They received Massachusetts Bonded Winery license No. 1.)
For nearly 40 years, until 2008, the Mathiesens, and their children and grandchildren, planted, maintained, and harvested nearly 50 acres of wine grapes on the old Chicamoo Path near Little Duarte’s Pond.
“At the time my grandparents were operating Chicāma, there was a real prejudice against wine made from anything other than vinifera grapes (i.e. ‘It’s not ‘real’ wine!’),” explains Rosemary Confalone, the Mathiesen’s granddaughter, who worked at Chicāma from 2001 to 2008. “I think they felt a lot of pressure to stick with European Vitis vinifera grapes.”
But it’s not easy to grow them in Martha’s Vineyard’s humid climate, as they are prone to disease here. ”It’s really labor-intensive,” writes Confalone, “[but] we had good success with Viognier and Syrah (both varieties from the Rhone).
“It was a fun thing to have been a part of, and I feel a lot of pride when I think of what my grandparents were trying to do — pursue their passion for grape growing and winemaking, not to mention helping to start a winemaking industry in a totally new part of the country,” adds Confalone. The state’s first — and the Island’s only — commercial grape vineyard closed for good in 2008.
Our wild, native “vineyards” of fox grapes (Vitis labrusca) can still be found up-Island, just as Gosnold’s comrades described them.
But if you find yourself with your own native vineyard of the ever-spreading Toxicodendron radicans, is it possible to remove that treacherous vine? Can you just burn it? For answers, we defer to the sage advice of former Tisbury select board member and respected naturalist Craig Kingsbury of Vineyard Haven. “Holy hopped-up, jumping Jesus, don’t burn the shit! Are you crazy?” he is quoted in his biography, “Craig Kingsbury Talkin’.” “Best thing to do is dig it out, roots and all. Or sprinkle coarse salt at the base of each plant until it dies. Don’t use too much salt, or nothing else will grow on the spot. You can get coarse salt at SBS; since it’s a low grade of salt, it’s pretty cheap. Whatever you do, don’t burn the stuff! The smoke will give you a case of poison ivy so bad you’d qualify as an exhibit in a dime museum.”
“Leaves three, /Quickly flee.”
Chris Baer teaches photography and graphics at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. His book, “Martha’s Vineyard Tales,” containing many “This Was Then” columns, was released in 2018.
