North East, Pennsylvania: America's Grape Belt
Near Erie, Pennsylvania
Fourteen miles northeast of Erie on the Lake Erie shore, the borough of North East sits in the heart of one of the oldest wine grape regions in the United States. Settlement here dates to the seventeen nineties, and the borough was incorporated in eighteen thirty-four. Deacon Elijah Fay planted some of the first grapes of this lakeshore in eighteen eighteen, just over the state line in New York, drawn by the lake effect that moderates temperatures along the shore.
By the eighteen sixties William Griffith was running the area's first commercial winery, and Concord grapes soon became the signature crop. Today the Lake Erie Wine Country appellation stretches across four counties and produces a significant share of the Concord grapes used for juice and jelly nationwide. The annual North East Wine and Jazz Festival draws visitors to the same hillside vineyards that Fay's experiment started more than two centuries ago.
