Day Is Dying in the West
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Chautauqua County, NY
Chautauqua County, NY
Photos by Frank Seymour & Jim and Beth Maxwell Boyle
Copyright 2003, All Rights Reserved
A Westfield, NY Black Squirrel
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The Chautauqua County grape industry began in 1824 when Deacon Elizah Fry successfully planted the first "ISABELLA" and "CATAWBA" grape vines. In 1830 he made the first six gallons of wine and continued to expand his wine production to two thousand gallons at the time of his death in 1860. The first commercial winery was established in Brocton, NY in 1859. Other wineries followed and the total wine production grew to over two million gallons per year in 1900.
The signing of the Farm Winery Act in 1976 allowed individual grape farms to establish small wineries limited to a maximum production of 50,000 gallons per year. Passage of this law in New York State resulted in an increase in the number of wineries from fourteen in 1976 to over eighty in 1986.
Today Chautauqua County produces wines for all tastes which rivals the quality of premium vintages throughout the world. These wines include the fruity native Labruscas and exquisite French-American wines to European-style Chardonnays and Rieslings. The diversity and unique styles produced here are unequaled anywhere in the world, resulting in customer enthusiasm for New York wines everywhere.
4717 Chautauqua-Stedman Road
Mayville, NY 14757
Natalie Merchant is a folk singer. For 20 years she has been writing passionate, political folk songs and disguising them as radio-friendly power pop. First, with the seminal 10,000 Maniacs and then as a solo artist she has written songs about the dispossessed, the downtrodden, simple people facing overwhelming pressures of desperate circumstances- child abuse, divorce, the death penalty, and many more political topics. Now after twenty years of playing the major label game Merchant has released a record on her own label and has delivered an album of her brand of folksongs that she didn’t write. This album is beautiful. “The House Carpenter’s Daughter” is a collection of songs, some old, some new and some that until now were completely lost and only existed on paper. Merchant wraps her distinctive, resonant alto around self-arranged traditional tunes, as well as some newer, contemporary tracks in such a way that if you didn’t know better you might imagine that she conceived and wrote these songs herself. –By Ang.
Bill Ward Band
Highway in the Desert
Eclectic Swing/Folk/Blues, with a hint of Alt. Country. Guests include former Bonnie Raitt guitarist Will McFarlane, Big Leg Emma's Amanda Barton, and Bill's Dad. Swing, groove, and cry.
