Wine season: A tradition in the making

Norwalk, CT. These men of few words stood blowing into their frozen, cupped hands, puffing on cigarettes, and bouncing in place on a sidewalk sticky with blotches of juice and squashed skins that would sometimes end up on the soles of their shoes.

One of the old-timers gnawed on the stem of his pipe, while the smoke from the tobacco, mixed with the heavy aroma of grape drippings, acted as a balm on this cold October morning.

Every fall, amateur vintners come to buy their grapes at Peter Cocchia’s stand inside an old garage on Mulvoy Street, a sliver of a road beneath a railroad bridge off Ely Avenue.

Second and third-generation Italians and Portuguese living in the area are the backbone of Cocchia’s clientele, and many families have bought grapes here for their home winemaking—from Cocchia’s father and, before that, his grandparents—for nearly a century.  And they now have a proprietary feeling about the place. 

But this year the tradition carried about by Cocchia and other grape dealers and winemakers across the country has been stricken by some hard luck. An abnormally wet El Niño spring and late summer caused a poor set for the vintage crop—cutting the supply of red grapes way down, and driving the cost up.

Last week Cocchia was taking phone call after phone call from panicked customers, who upon hearing the bad news, would sometimes express their anger and frustration in their native tongue.  Cocchia, a warm-hearted man, said he felt sadden to have to turn some of his oldest customers away.

“It’s the shortest season I have ever had,” the grape seller said last week. There’s been a lot of heartburn, a lot of dissatisfaction. And some people just won’t take no for an answer.”

A cause for consternation

Whereas the grape season here usually runs six to eight weeks, beginning in mid-September, last week the final delivery trucks of grapes made their way to Cocchia’s stand, and this week he was down to his last few crates of the season.

Cocchia said that ahbout 75 percent of his customers did actually get the grapes they wanted this year. Last month the garage was well stocked with an assortment of juice grapes—like Ruby Cabernet, French Columbard and Grenache—and he was selling an average of 500 to 600 crates a day.

“But for those who buy their grapes late,” he said, “I’ve been spending hours on the phone trying to explain the situation.”

Last week a few of Cocchia’s customers formed a circle around him and listened as he explained how the red grape supply had dwindled down to just a few crates of Alicante, a dark red grape used more for coloring than for taste.

With heartbroken expressions on their faces, the men stood silently for a moment watching as bees circled the crates with their colorful labels and nosedived into what remained of the red grapes to feed on the sugary juice.

“The grapes are finished, but my while seedless are beautiful,” Cocchia told one customer. “This is the year to make a soft, mellow white wine. You keep your old formulas for next year and this time we’ll do something different.”

“But boss I need red Zinfandel,” replied one customer, walking along the row of crates in the dark-lit garage.  And then leaving, he said under his breath: “Il vino e perduto” (the wine is ruined).

“In his mind he thinks I’m hiding some grapes back there,” Cocchia said, watching the man, his head lowered, walk up the street towards home.

It was four years ago when 44-year-old Cocchia, a third-generation Italian, took over the grape business from his late father, Domenic, who opened up shop here in the 1920s and at one time traveled by horse-and-wagon to lower Manhattan to buy his grapes. These days the berries Cocchia sells grow in the San Joaquin Valley in central California and are shipped by railroad to Springfield, Mass., and then delivered by large trucks to the shop in South Norwalk.

Two doors down from the garage is boarded-up shop where Cocchia’s grandparents once ran the city’s first Italian-American grocery, and then sold grapes in the fall.

As a boy, Cocchia, who makes his living during the rest of the year running a liquor store in town—also a family hand-down that dates back before Prohibition—recalled how when he helped his father deliver grapes, what he would enjoy most was listening to stories by the customers—“all their stories about making wine.”

Samples of their product

Last week a few of his customers stopped by to drop off samples of wine they’ve created in their basements, and carry out the tradition of boasting and arguing about whose is the best.

Lined along the shelves in Cocchia’s office, sticking out of desk drawers, packed in the corners in crumpled paper bags are jars , soda bottles and wine bottles filled with wine from last year’s grapes.

He poured a sample of Muscat—“It’s sugary, but has a nice finish”—and then a deep red mixture of Ruby Cabernet and Grenache. “Now this is better, with a light medium bite that doesn’t knock me down so I can have a second glass.”