French wine industry saved by Denison resident

An early resident of Denison, Dr. Thomas Volney Munson, single-handedly saved the French wine industry. Dr. Munson was born in Illinois and came to Denison by way of Kentucky and Nebraska. He had a degree in horticulture and was an expert in growing grapes for wine production. It was his opinion that Denison offered the perfect climate for what he wanted to do. Using native grape vines that he found along the Red River, Dr. Munson developed a variety of grapes for use in the wine industry. One of the shows where Dr Munson exhibited his work was the Columbian Exposition in Chicago of 1893. That was where the French scientist Piette Viala found him. At the time the French grape vines were suffering from a parasite called phylloxera. The problem was particularly bad in the region of Cognac. Munson had developed a rootstock that was resistant to the parasite to which the French could graft different types of grapes to produce different varieties of wine. And voila, the rest is history. The French honored Dr Munson with the French Legion of Honor and he was inducted into the French Societies of Agriculture and Viticulteurs. To this day French vintners graft their grape varieties to the hardy Texas rootstock. In 1992 a formal relationship of “Sister Cities” was stuck between Cognac, France and Denison, Texas.

The Thomas Volney Munson Memorial Vineyard resides on the campus of Grayson County College. Early in the 1970’s a retired oil executive, Mr. Wallace E. Dancy and Mr. John Clift, State Editor of the Denison Herald, collaborated on a project to rediscover the achievements of Dr. Munson. They discovered that many of the Munson Grape varieties still existed in private collection. In the spring of 1974 the Memorial was created. They started with 5 varieties of the grapes that Munson cultivated with the goal of finding as many of the 300 that Munson developed.

From the concept of honoring Dr Volney Munson to a full fledged vineyard and education center, Grayson County College now hosts the T. V. Munson Viticulture and Enology Center. The facility serves as a regional center for the education and a repository for historical documents that support the international wine industry. The building houses historic memorabilia and a research library. Credit and non-credit classes are offered throughout the year. Grayson county viticulture and enology program is one of the few degreed grape growing and wine making programs in the country. It is also the only course regimen of it's kind offered at a community College environment. This is particularly important since the Texas Wine industry is currently growing a very fast pace.