July 2010. From grapes that beat all the odds just to grow around here.

A tour bus pulls away from the streaming line of traffic headed toward Jackson on I-55, belches out a plume of diesel smoke and heads off the looping exit.

Round this bend, past this tiny church and community cemetery, up a gravel road past row after row of berry orchards, before it finally comes to a tire-crunching stop at the tasting room of Amato’s Winery in Independence, Louisiana.

The tourists from Des Moines and Los Angeles and Kankakee stop in for a sampling of some of Amato’s ten different berry-flavored wines. After the tasting, they’ll pick up a few bottles of strawberry semi-sweet wine and blueberry wine and muscadine wine to take home.

Henry Amato, a 62-year-old native of the Independence area, will smile and exchange pleasantries with the visitors to his winery, but his mind will be on a wine that isn’t among those just sampled.

La-Sarachannah (pronounced La Sarah See Hannah), is the name he has given to the mysterious bunch grape he discovered five years ago, along a canal in a tiny corner of property he purchased more than twenty years ago.

“Years ago when the interstate came through it divided one of the last plantations around here, one belonging to an old German family named Huck,” Amato says. “I bought some of that land on the west side of I-55. Well, way in back of the old plantation were several old sharecroppers’ homes. Near the homes along a little canal was this grapevine growing wild on some trees.  The plant was strong and disease free, and it was producing grapes. It was what we call bunch grapes (many grapes growing from one stem). I had never seen anything like that in Louisiana because it was unheard of in this climate. Bunch grapes just didn’t grow like this here. This was something completely new and I just literally bumped into it. To say I was excited, well…that wouldn’t begin to explain how I felt.”

Amato chats with a tourist and tells how he’s been “making wine all my life.” He ticks off the names of the wines bearing the Amato Winery label and sold in markets across Louisiana and parts of the South. “Rural families always made wines and kept a barrel around for their own enjoyment,” Amato explains. “Our family was no different. It was just a natural thing when I took it from one level to the next and started making wine commercially several years back. It’s a good business. We make a comfortable living, but really most of our profits go right back into the business. The equipment is very expensive.”

The “we” here is Amato and, Jessie, his wife of forty-one years. The couple has two pharmacist sons living in Florida, but not for long.

“One of my sons may be coming home by the end of the year to take over the winery,” Amato says. “Then, I’ll devote all my time to my new grape. I’d love to be able to produce wine from those grapes within a year or so.”

Leading up to that, Amato will continue to work with a team of scientists from the School of Agriculture at LSU who are as excited about the one-of-a-kind grape as Amato himself.

“Right now, we’re in constant touch with the scientists at LSU,” Amato says. “They’ve been just super throughout this entire process. Every week, Jessie takes pictures of our vine growth and emails it to them. They’re great to work with.”

“This is really something special,” says Dr. Charles Johnson, an LSU professor of plant propagation and fruit and nut production for the past thirty-one years. “Nobody has ever tried anything with bunch grapes in this climate because just to survive, this species would take an enormous amount of work. But the ones that Mr. Amato discovered quite by accident are thriving on their own: no problems with disease or climate. They’re just growing. He took a cutting from the mother vine, the one he found at the canal, and we took several cuttings of it with us to propagate here at LSU. He has a large vine growing on his land and we’re going to continue to work with what we have and deliver it to him in the future for planting. I think he’s going to do quite well with it.”

“The only thing I wanted out of this whole deal,“ Amato says, “is to be able to name this new grape.“

Dr. Johnson says when it came to that decision, to name what all are just about agreed is a genuine new species of bunch grape, they all deferred to the wine maker from Independence.

“It was his grape found by him on his land,“ Dr. Johnson says. “It was his to name. He was so proud of that, you could see it in his face. Quite an experience for him…and for us here at LSU to be in on something like this.”

The Amatos tapped into the names of their three grandchildren: Sarah, Christian and Hannah, grafted the three names then honored the State of Louisiana with the “La” as a prefix and came up with the mellifluous La-Sarahchannah as the name for the new grape.”

The sun is beating down mercilessly on the Amato’s berry acreage spread a few feet from I-55. A radio report says the temperature is right at 105. Amato wipes his brow and waves to a woman picking blueberries nearby. He summons a visitor and after a short trip through a muddy field, he stops and smiles the way a new daddy does at the nursery window in the newborn section of a hospital.

Henry Amato points out his baby and slowly slips his hand under a bunch of maturing La-Sarahchannah grapes. They are green, and firm and marble size.

“No telling how long these grapes were growing back there on that tree along that canal,” he says. “And to think I stumbled across them. I’ve thought, ‘If these grapes were growing back there…unknown…maybe there are others. I’ve looked; gone over every inch of land. But that’s it. No more. But who needs anything more? This is a once in a lifetime find…and I found it. I’m really excited to get this show on the road and start producing wine from this grape, maybe in a year or two. We’ll probably turn this out as a dry wine or semi-sweet. Who knows? This could be the next Chardonnay.”

Freelance writer George Gurtner has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His first book, Historic Churches of Old New Orleans is in its third printing; his next book, Cookin’ for the Mob, delivers to LSU Press in the summer of 2010.

Details. Details. Details.

Amato's Winery
12415 West Black Cat Road
Independence, La
(985) 878-6566

Add Comment