Over a barrel : the rise and fall of New York's Taylor Wine Company / Thomas Pellechia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pellechia, Thomas, 1945- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Taylor Wine Company--History.

Taylor Wine Company.

Wine industry--New York (State)--History.

Wine industry.

History.

New York (State).

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 244 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Albany, NY : Excelsior Editions , [2015]

Summary:

How a small family company in the Finger Lakes became one of the most important wine producers in the United States, only to be taken down by corporate greed and mismanagement. Finalist for the 2015 ForeWord INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award in the Regional Category In 1880, Walter Stephen Taylor, a cooper's son, started a commercial grape juice company in New York's Finger Lakes region. Two years later, wine production was added, and by the 1920s, the Taylor Wine Company was firmly established. Walter Taylor's three sons carefully guided the company through Prohibition and beyond, making it the most important winery in the Northeast and profoundly affecting the people and community of Hammondsport, where the company was headquartered. In the 1960s, the Taylor family took the company public. Ranked sixth in domestic wine production and ripe for corporate takeover, the company was sold to Coca-Cola in 1977. Three more changes of corporate ownership followed until, in 1995, this once-dynamic and important wine producer was obliterated, tearing apart the local economy and changing a way of life that had lasted for nearly a century. Drawing on archival research as well as interviews with many of the principal players, Thomas Pellechia skillfully traces the economic dynamism of the Finger Lakes wine region, the passion and ingenuity of the Taylor family, and the shortsighted corporate takeover scenario that took down a once-proud American family company. In addition to providing important lessons for business innovators, Over a Barrel>/i> is a cautionary tale for a wine region that is repeating its formative history. Thomas Pellechia is an independent journalist and writer who previously produced wine in the Finger Lakes and operated a wine shop in Manhattan. He is the author of Wine: The 8,000-Year-Old Story of the Wine Trade, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting and Running a Winery, and Timeless Bounty: Food and Wine in New York's Finger Lakes. He lives in Hammondsport, New York.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Arrivals 1

Chapter 2 War and Prohibition 19

Chapter 3 Rebirth 45

Chapter 4 The Rise 59

Chapter 5 The Competition 73

Chapter 6 Successful Choices 85

Chapter 7 Expansion 99

Chapter 8 Offspring 119

Chapter 9 Trouble Ahead 129

Chapter 10 The Big Leagues 141

Chapter 11 Fraying 161

Chapter 12 Unraveling 183

Chapter 13 The Fall 201.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781438455495

1438455496

OCLC:

878224848