Westfield smells like half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and looks like a Norman Rockwell painting.
American flags ripple from light poles down Main Street. Tractors stall traffic on roads that become stained and sticky with spilled grape juice each harvest season. A church steeple looms on the horizon as visitors drive in from the Thruway. Before they get to downtown Westfield, they pass a family-run pie shop, an Abraham Lincoln statue and a couple of grape processing plants.
With apologies to another fruit, it is a village as American as grape pie.
Westfield is at the heart of the Lake Erie Concord Grape Belt, a band of 30,000 acres that stretches from Silver Creek to northwestern Pennsylvania. Each fall, the breeze from Lake Erie brings the grapes’ earthy aroma through the village. It permeates the air the way the smell of toasted oats from the General Mills cereal factory can envelop Buffalo.
Westfield’s identity was forged by the Concord grape.
People flocked to Moore Park for grape stomping, wine tasting, slingshotting grapes at targets and more during the Westfield Grape and Wine Fe…
It was the longtime home of Welch’s headquarters, the company that popularized grape juice, and was once dubbed the “grape juice capital of the world.” A village sign says: “Westfield … A Grape Place To Live.”
The village has held onto its identity, despite the loss of Welch’s corporate headquarters and a shrinking demand for Concord grape juice. To remain a “grape place to live,” local leaders have had to innovate.
“We’re trying to make that comeback of being known as the largest Concord grape-growing area of the world,” said Judy McCord, a retired Westfield teacher who organizes the Westfield Grape and Wine Festival. “Everybody wants to be known as something.”
Western New York’s Dunkirk Dave is somewhat of a foodie. He leaves his home to predict the future each Groundhog Day for nothing less than the best pumpkin pie.
Westfield wants people to take another look at the Concord.
A grape cooperative is investing millions of dollars in the hopes of doubling grape demand across the region.
The pie shop is one of the rare bakeries in the world where a Concord grape pie is sold out-of-season. A fledgling grape festival, now in its third year, happened over a recent sun-drenched September weekend.
“The pride that our region has, or should have, was diminished a little bit about 40 or 50 years ago, when Welch’s moved its headquarters,” said Jennifer Johnson, owner of Johnson Estate Winery in Westfield. “That’s coming back now.”
‘People needed to be proud’
On a recent Saturday, a pair of siblings washed the grape juice from their shins and ankles during the Westfield Grape and Wine Festival.
The Thomas siblings raced to stomp the most juice out of a bucket of grapes. (“I beat my brother like four times,” said Arianna Thomas, 8.) They competed in a grape pie eating contest, with the purple evidence hardened on their faces. (“If I could have just eaten the last piece,” lamented Damian Thomas, 11.) Arianna, whose backyard abuts a grape vineyard, doesn’t need to be told about the appeal of the Concord grape; they look like “balloons,” feel like “stepping in jelly” and taste like “cotton candy.”
“It’s a way to celebrate life in a small community,” said Helen Baran, a Westfield grape farmer and former president of the Concord Grape Belt Heritage Association.
The festival is the latest in a string of local efforts to grow tourism around the Concord grape.
When Welch’s headquarters left Westfield for Massachusetts, in a long goodbye throughout the 1980s and into the 2000s, the community was staggered by the loss of jobs, residents, students and – consequently – customers for local businesses.
The grape industry also suffered from a shift in public opinion. Americans who once viewed grape juice as a medicinal beverage began shunning the drink for its high sugar content. Demand for grape juice fell. (It took another hit recently as the wine industry, a faithful purchaser of Concord grape juice, loses customers to nonalcoholic drinks and canned cocktails.)
“The sense of pride needed to be brought out,” Baran said. “People needed to be proud of their community and of their businesses and their jobs.”
Concord grapes, currently in season at Western New York vineyards, have an intense grape flavor.
The towns the Concord grape built are rich in preserved architecture. You won’t find an empty Main Street filled with reminders of better days. Brick storefronts, with help from publicly funded face-lifts, are occupied by restaurants and antique shops. Apartments are planned for a prominent, remaining ghost: Welch’s stately, vacant headquarters.
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The revitalization masterpiece was the transformation of a car dealership on Route 20 into a museum and gift shop dedicated to “all things grape.” The Lake Erie Grape Discovery Center opened in 2013 and sees 7,000 visitors annually.
It sells nearly every grape item that exists. Grape pie. Grape ice cream. It stocks grape concentrate, wine and a full suite of Welch’s products, including sparkling grape juice wrapped in gold foil like champagne. It has grape earrings, grape toys and Tootsie Pops – but only the grape flavor.
“It’s been a while to recover,” said Phil Baideme, 76, a fourth-generation Westfield grape farmer. “It’s coming back.”
At the grape festival, Alexander Ellis, 5, loaded a slingshot with a grape and aimed at a target board. He lives nearby with his mother, Bethany Ellis, who also grew up in Westfield.
“It’s a town that even if you leave, you always come back,” she said.
Not everyone comes back − the population continues to shrink − but some do. Festival volunteer Tiffany Travis returned to Westfield to raise her children.
“We’re all a family,” Travis said. “We want Westfield people to turn out for Westfield people.”
When Baideme left briefly for college, he told everyone he was from “the home of Welch’s grape juice.”
“Every person, in my three short years that I’ve met in Westfield, absolutely loves grapes,” said Andy Campbell, who moved here to work at Westfield Ag & Turf. “Almost every person that I met in this town has a connection to the grape industry.”
Opportunity knocks
Baideme reached deep into one of his Concord grapevines and slipped a grape from its purple skin and into his mouth.
Outsiders accustomed to seedless grapes from California may not know to do that, but those raised in grape country do.
Concords taste like the version of grapes that exists in your head. That’s because Concords aren’t sold in most produce aisles − they are too delicate to transport − and are instead used for processed grape foods. What Americans think of as “grape” flavor is Concord grape.
While walking through a vineyard that he planted when he was 12, Baideme spoke of nearby farmers who ripped out their Concord grapevines. Over the past decade, New York paid farmers in the area to remove their Concord grapes to level out the grape’s high supply and low demand.
Decline, however, is the mother of innovation. New products are coming to new markets.
Baideme’s daughter-in-law, Melissa Baideme, created a new line of Concord grape vinaigrette and pie filling for her business CK Natural Fruit Juice.
Niagara County’s wine country has been facing an identity crisis. “The hardest part is establishing an identity over the region,” Arrowhead Springs Winery manager James Susice said. “We’re at a crossroads.”
Growers’ Co-Op, a cooperative of more than 70 local grape farmers, has been selling more juice to clients in China and Canada, where grape flavor is “becoming very, very popular,” said general manager Tyler Gorton. He is also pursuing customers in the growing prebiotic soda market.
Westfield Maid Cooperative, which processes grapes for 57 local farms, plans to spend $2.6 million on developing a new product that, if successful, will double the local grape demand. Andy Putnam, director of sales and strategy, sees a path for grape juice into schools, hospitals and prisons by replacing fruit juices made with apples or different grape varieties. The new product, a juice packet called Good N’ Grapey, won the New York Concord Grape Innovation Award in 2022.
“We want to make sure that the beautiful Lake Erie region stays beautiful, stays in farms,” Putnam said. “Stays in grapes.”
Consider the grape
When Buffalonians embark on a fall excursion, they usually head to an apple farm or a pumpkin patch. But the Concord grape makes a compelling argument for a day trip. Foliage blazes red, gold and orange on the drive down to Westfield.
Timmerman’s Farm Market sells fresh Concord grapes. Portage Pie bakes local Concord grape pie. Full Strength Coffee Company makes grape lattes and carries local grape concentrate. Then there are the 21 wineries along Lake Erie Wine Country. (The Lincoln statue has nothing to do with grapes, but memorializes a delightful tidbit of local lore.)
At one point on Route 20, near the Grape Discovery Center, the lake shimmers in the distance. Rows of vineyards whip past the car window.
The windows are down, of course, to let in a familiar scent.
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Francesca Bond
Food & drink reporter
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