Overmountain Vineyards hosts
U.S. Park Service walking tour
17 June 2017
Frank and Lita Lilly bought 73 acres of rolling North Carolina hills 27 years ago to build a vineyard and wine-making business, not knowing at the time that he was purchasing a piece of history. When they learned from a U.S. National Park Service officer that a portion of the historic Overmountain Campaign Trail passed through the property, they changed the name of his business, and worked with the Park Service to get the segment of the trail certified as authentic.
Today, Overmountain Vineyards on Sandy Plains Road near Tryon, N.C. has a thriving wine shop and tasting room where visitors can stroll among his vines, enjoy a tasting of their wines on site and buy wines to take home.
And on this sunny June Saturday, the Lillys hosted National Park Service Ranger Margo Blewett, who provided a narrative of the Overmountain march in 1780 by hundreds of Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina militiamen who trekked more than 300 miles thorough sometimes trackless mountains to confront British Commander Patrick Ferguson and his loyalist militia at Kings Mountain.
The National Park Service in the Carolinas protects and acts as host at some of the most significant battlegrounds from the American Revolutionary War. They include Cowpens in Spartanburg County, Kings Mountain near Gastonia, N.C., Ninety Six in Greenwood County, S.C., and Guilford Courthouse in Greensboro, N.C. More than 200 battle sites from the Revolutionary War have been identified in South Carolina, more than any other state. The National Park Service has launched a new program to illustrate to the public that the Southern Campaign, led by Generals Nathaniel Greene and Daniel Morgan, was the tipping point in the great North American war that resulted in creation of the United States of America. Key turning points in the campaign to defeat British General Lord Cornwallis were the battles of Kings Mountain, which in turn inspired militia in the Carolinas to rally to defeat Tarleton's British raiders at Cowpens.
Wine-making in the Carolinas has a long history
In October 2012, my wife Elizabeth and I traveled to Normandy with a half-dozen friends, and stayed for five days in a 500-year-old chateau about a quarter mile from Pointe du Hoc, the cliffs scaled by American soldiers in the opening hours of the D-Day invasion in 1944. We had a room on the third floor, from which we could see La Manche, or the English Channel. In October, the weather could be quite angry, and we had at least one thrilling night with the wind whistling around the turrets of the old castle.
The breakfast and common room had a dusty pile of French-language coffee table books, including one about the castles in the region we were visiting. Elizabeth, who spent several years translating French-language dispatches into English for the international news organization Agence France-Presse, was reading about the Chateau Du St. Pierre, where we were staying. The story of the fortress-style farmhouse really caught her attention when it mentioned that a previous owner, Jean Louis du Mesnil de St. Pierre, had forsaken his Norman castle to settle in Caroline du Sud. Jean Louis was a Huguenot, the French Protestant movement that spawned a wave of migration to the Southeastern colonies of North America in the mid to late 18th century. We know them too well, from the names of our streets – and our friends. I am a descendant of Huguenots who settled initially in Virginia and later migrated to the Upstate region of South Carolina. The coffee table book, written in French, described a tragic tale of Jean Louis efforts to help establish a colony on the Savannah River named New Bordeaux. He is credited by accounts of early wine-making as the first to successfully grow grapes and produce wine in South Carolina at the New Bordeaux colony he helped settle. He spent much time and effort trying to raise capital, even traveling to London to seek investment in his venture. Ironically, since Jean Louis came from a region famous for its apple cider liquors, known as Calvados, this settler and leader of a Huguenot colony in America wanted to establish a grape growing culture more well known in regions like Bordeaux. But his efforts to raise capital were largely rejected. Henry Laurens writes in his papers about Jean Louis and his venture, suggesting it would likely not be a good investment. New Bordeaux ultimately did not succeed. Founded initially in 1763, it was in part a victim of the Revolutionary War. According to the excellent UC-Davis history of wine-making in America, Jean Louis joined the South Carolina patriots in the war and was, according to a contemporary note, made "Lieutenant to a Small Fort in the back country where he lives upon his pay of £ 30-a year.” He was killed on an expedition against the Indians, and that "untimely end," as a later memorialist wrote, "overturned the establishment in its infancy." New Bordeaux, never very flourishing, dwindled to the crossroads that it now is, where a marker records the site of the old Huguenot church.
The UC-Davis history contains a richly detailed chapter on the Huguenot wine-makers in South Carolina. South Carolina’s wine-making endeavors have been spotty at best in the years since Jean Louis suffered his “untimely end” in the backcountry of Caroline du Sud. Today, information about the industry in this state remains difficult to obtain. There seem to be between a dozen and two dozen wine-making enterprises in the state. Wine-making has always been problematic in South Carolina, as the climate is too hot and often too dry, and prone to disease in grapes traditionally used for winemaking. Early efforts at wine-making focused on the scuppernong, a native grape that produces a sweet wine.
But the growing of grapes seems to be better suited to the Piedmont region on either side of the North-South border of the two states. An exception has long been Duplin County, in Eastern North Carolina, which has a significant wine-making culture. North Carolina had about 25 wineries before the Civil War, which crippled the business for a century. Prohibition effectively killed the industry in North Carolina. Those early wines were made mostly from the native scuppernong grapes. The renaissance began in earnest in the 1990s. Today, the North Carolina grape and wine industry ranks 10th in the nation, boosts more than 129 wineries, a number that has more than doubled since 2005. The industry creates a $1.3 billion economy and supports 7,600 jobs.
A rapidly developing trend in a crescent from Columbus, N.C. to Hendersonville features a half-dozen or more vineyards and wine-makers well-schooled in the science of wine-making. Those we have met relocated to the region for its climate, soils, and rolling, sunbathed hills. One in particular is the Overmountain Vineyards, near Columbus. Frank and Lita Lilly produce several varieties of wine, but seem proudest of their Petit Manseng, also featured in tonight’s event. Overmountain Vineyards provides a tasting venue, as well as a fire pit and chairs where visitors can bring a picnic lunch and enjoy with wine purchased onsite. The added value of new wine-makers of the Piedmont Carolinas is to create a tourism attraction for the growing legions of people drawn to Upstate cities and towns. They make a pleasant daytrip or overnight getaway. I hope you will try it some day.
Park Ranger Margo Blewett and Overmountain Vineyards founder Frank Lilly
