If you geek out over history just as much as you geek out over wine, Cornell University’s Eastern Wine and Grape Archive is preserving American winemaking history with documents, records and artifacts dating back to the 19th century. The archive is open to the public and housed in Cornell’s Kroch Library.
The collection started up in 1998 and aims to focus on artifacts from winemakers east of the Mississippi. The collection has documents from the Pleasant Valley Wine Co. in Hammondsport, NY, which opened in 1860, and labeling and advertising documents from what is believed to be the first black-owned winery in New York state.
Cornell’s wine archives are one of a kind in the U.S., and they’re looking for more materials that help tell the story of wine in America, and especially in New York.