Grower finds success with Vinifera

Jim Hazlitt pulled some vines to plant different grapes for making wines.

Out came the Concords and Catawbas and in went the Rieslings and chardonnays. Some of the 100-year-old vines yanked out had been planted by Hazlitt's ancestors who came from Mecklenburg in 1852 to settle in Hector as farmers.

When Jim graduated from Cornell University in 1960 with a fruit-growing degree, he and his brother Jerry Hazlitt teamed up to run the family farm.

They gutted a home on the property and rebuilt the structure that would become home for two newlywed couples, as they both got married within the year.

Eventually, the house could not accommodate two families and Jim built a place for his family down by Seneca lake. They divided the family land and started separate businesses.

Jerry went on to form a winery, Hazlitt's 1852 Vineyards, while Jim continued to focus solely on growing grapes.

By 1985, Jim was selling 98 percent of his grape harvest to Taylor Wine Company. The lower prices for the Native American and hybrid grapes, 180 dollars per ton, certainly were not going to pay the bills. When the bottom fell out of the wine business in Hammondsport and Taylor wound up not taking any of his grapes, Jim had a tough road ahead.

It was time to change direction. In 1977 he had talked with Hermann J. Wiemer, who was already growing vinifera grapes on the west side of Seneca Lake. Later that year, Jim took the plunge and planted a couple of acres of chardonnay and Riesling grapes himself.

He planted some pinot noir grapes in 1985 and 1987 and added cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc in 1990. Today, Jim grows 13 different varieties of vinifera grapes on 60 of the 80 vineyard acres.

"I'm kind of a novice, I've only been doing vinifera for (about) 15 years even though I have been growing grapes since 1960," Jim says. "We learned a lot in 2000," he says, referring to a tough growing season that featured a cold and wet weather. "We learned about trellising and fruit thinning," he adds.

Jim charts the temperature throughout the growing season and compares it to the weather from previous years. If he sees that there has not been enough heat for the fruit by a certain time in the growing season, Jim now knows when he should start dropping fruit.

Cutting off some of the grape clusters helps the remainder of the crop to ripen fully.

"I think there are going to be a lot of good wines from this year," Jim says, despite the periods of rain and cooler temperatures during part of the growing season.

Jim follows competitions to see how wineries using his grapes fare.

"I always get a list from the Governor's Cup and check off ours," Jim says. According to Jim, his grapes have won the Governor's Cup three times, recognized as the best overall wine in New York state. He also can lay claim to numerous double-gold winners from the same competition.

"I wouldn't be in the grape business today if I hadn't changed to vinifera. That's why everyone started wineries. They couldn't make money growing grapes," Jim says. He and his son Eric supply a variety of grapes to 22 area wineries from their Sawmill Creek Vineyards.

The last of this year's harvest was completed earlier in the week. Having sold almost 400 tons of grapes this year, 300 of them vinifera, Jim appears to have made the transition to growing vinifera grapes just fine. Jeff Richards' wine column appears Saturdays. For comments or questions, he can be reached at 607/271-8279 or 800/836-8970, ext. 279, or e-mail: thewineguy