Greyton's death occurred just as the first vintage from the freshly incorporated vineyard was being bottled for market. "It was a dream we shared," Walter says, "to produce a 100% New York State wine from French-American grapes developed here. I'm glad he saw it come true."
According to Walter's numbers, Bully Hill sold 300 cases of wine that year and grossed $6,000. "It was extremely difficult to sell a product that had never been made before. We sold it anywhere we could. Not many people wanted to take it." Fortunately, Walter had one thing in his favor; he was turning out some extraordinary wine. Many experts agreed that his reds were equal to, if not better than, any others produced in America. His whites, particularly the Aurora Blanc and Seyval Blanc, were said to be among the best available anywhere.
Soon, Bully Hill was selling all the wine it could produce. In the meantime, Walter kept up his steady pressure for reform in the wine industry, particularly within New York State. In 1967, he had founded, on Bully Hill, the first wine museum in America.And in 1972, he hung a picture in the museum that he claims outraged New York State winemakers, and graphically summarized his contempt for tank-car wine. Done by Walter in pen and ink, it shows night-marish representations of New York grape growers bizarrely contorted as they strain to support a tank car rolling over the tracks above them on its way to New York State wineries. The tank car leaves crucified bodies in its wake.
Walter says he received death threats as a result of this drawing. It is an unexpected and dark chapter in his story that even Walter has difficulty recounting. He seems to stumble and stutters when he encounters it; then he blurts out, "I was told by friends that unless I stopped those drawings, I was going to be shut up." Walter also claims that rumors were circulating that he had been put away in a "nut house" and that these rumors got back to his mother and upset her greatly.
He decided that his best defense against such allegations of insanity was to increase his visibility, to get a little press. So he hit the road. And, like everything else about Walter, he did it in style.
He was a feature writer's dream. He was a sideshow, a one-man carnival, a gross exaggeration of America's love of hyperbole. Ostensibly, he was off on some kind of jaunt to promote his wines and to crusade for fair labeling of all wines. Mostly, he was a folk hero in the making, and the facts didn't matter.
Still, participants in the daily miracle managed to keep their wits long enough to get the essential truth straight. Said a Boston Herald American reporter: "He's every inch a showman! The former protennis player carried a backpack and bulging portfolio held together with string from which he produced, like a magician out of a hat, a seemingly endless assortment of objects including a sketch pad, oil paints, a couple of tennis racquets, a bunch of grapevines, and a few bottles of his own wine. An accomplished musician, he also totes around a guitar slung across his back and a harmonica tucked in his pocket."
Walter recalls this period as the "travels of Johnny Grapeseed," a humorous but accurate assessment. Walter was becoming a folk hero. In his travels, he was testing the durability of his charisma; he was refining his personal style to capture just the right mixture of selfrighteous histrionics, shocking sincerity, and Laurel-and-Hardy buffoonery.
After the 1975 romp, Walter settled back on Bully Hill with his newspaper clippings and testimonials. He was an acknowledged mouthpiece of winemaking -- somebody to be quoted. Naturally, when the merger between Coca-Cola and the Taylor Wine Co. was proposed, Walter had to be consulted. On September 14, 1976, he told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: "I think it's going to be one of the best things that could happen to Hammondsport. Coca-Cola is one of the best-managed companies in the United States." And then the axe fell.
"Up until 1976," says Michael J. Doyle, who was then general counsel and is now president of the Taylor Wine Co., "our feelings had been to leave the issue alone, but when Walter announced he was coming out with a special line of Walter S. Taylor wines, we decided it couldn't be ignored."
Doyle explains that the front and back labels Walter intended to use on these new wines were radically different from any Walter had used in the past. Although Walter had often signed his name on labels in the past and called himself "owner of the estate," the name of Bully Hill Vineyards was always given greater prominence.
On the new labels, Bully Hill Vineyards was of decidedly secondary importance compared to the prominence of the Taylor name. On the labels for the Seyval Blanc, vintage 1976, for example, the Taylor name appears nine times. Walter was no longer just the "owner of the estate"; he was the "owner of the Taylor Family Estate." On the back label, Walter claimed that Bully Hill was the original Taylor vineyard and called it the Taylor Family Vineyard Estate.
In addition, Walter included on some of the labels portraits he had drawn of himself, his father, and his grandfather. He identified his ancestors and gave their life spans in years. "It's a question of when do you say enough is enough," Doyle says. "When Walter came out with the special line of wines, it was clearly enough." When asked why he decided to change his labels, Walter says, "What the hell? I had put my name on my wine bottles before and nobody ever bothered me."
On July 8, 1977, the Taylor Wine Co. filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York that contained eight claims for relief from trademark infringement and unfair competition. Taylor Wine also asked the court for a preliminary injunction to stop Bully Hill from using the new labeling.
