This is still pretty incredible that we found this bottle on Ebay the day the sale of our farm went through 4 years ago today. This is a bottle from the 1800's made by Gary's Great Grandfather - complete with label and all. The auction had actually ended and no one bought it so we had to contact them to put the bottle back up for auction and paid about $6 for it.
Gary was destined to be a juice maker. Gary's Great Grandfather was a very esteemed grape grower and juice maker back in the 1800’s. George C. Snow’s name is still in many books used today in universities on grape growing. He was also in charge of the Viticulture Section at the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1893. The family knew that he was an avid grape grower, but what we were not aware of, was that he had a grape juice company the “Snow Grape Juice Company”.
We did not know about this until several years after we got into making juice ourselves. The Snow family had a very large mansion on Lake Keuka in Penn Yan, NY and how the family lost it was always a mystery. With the help of the internet, we were able to find out a lot about the family and the juice business. The size of the company was equal to that of Welch’s and was even exported and sold over in England at one time. Dr. Welch and Gary’s grandfather it would seem were staunch rivals at one time. After the death of George C. Snow and a fire in the warehouse where all of the Snow’s grape juice was being stored, the company was eventually taken over by Welch’s.
Just a bottle to many, but a pretty important bottle to us.
#SNowGrapeJuiceCompany #history #Tabletree