"I remember T.V. Munson as a tall, lanky man.  He always had a sparkle in his eye.  He was very active and would think nothing of walking miles.  He had a wonderful personality, too."
Horace Foster was just a youngster when he went to work for the late Thomas Volney Munson. His father had been associated with the noted viticulturist for years.
"I think I was about 15 when Munson died. But I had worked for him several years by then," he said. "I remember a motto plaque he had hanging in his office. It went 'Nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm.'
"It sure fits Mr. Munson. He was enthusiastic about everything he did," recalled Foster.
Foster and his brother, Emmett, and his father jointly operated their own nursery after the death of Munson, although the elder Foster continued to help Will B. Munson, T.V.'s son, for several years.
"This is grape country," said Foster. "Prohibition killed it. If it hadn't of been for prohibition, we might be one of the great grape wine states of the world. The soil here, starting in Denton County and including Montague, Cooke, Bowie, Grayson, Fannin, Lamar, and Red River [counties], and the companion Oklahoma counties of Love, Marshall, Atoka, Bryan, McCurtin, all the way to the Arkansas line, has the combination clay and sandy soil ideal for grapes.
"When he [Munson] would come in from one of his trips, he would have many varieties of wild grapes. These would be planted, and after they bloomed, then he would cross-pollinate them. He would cross them with some European grapes such as Lambrusco, or some of the French varieties. And he didn't overlook the grapes of New York State and California.
"After they bloomed, then he would plant the seed of the mixture of the two crosses. He would cull the plants down to the best of 1,000 different kinds of seedlings. Then he would meticulously write down the characteristics of all that he felt were worthwhile to keep.
"Then it was out on another grape hunting trip. While he ultimately may have settled on something over 300 varieties, there is no way of knowing how many hundreds more he tested and, in his search for perfection, found wanting," Foster said.
"I remember that he had one small two-acre vineyard just across the road west from the existing Brookside Manufacturing Co. plant in northwest Denison. He took the fruit from these grapes to the 1908 World's Fair in St. Louis and won the top prize.
"Some years later, when Will B. had taken over, I took a display of Munson grapes that I had grown down to College Station and won first prizes at an international exhibition there," Foster said.
At one time Foster said he had 24 to 30 different varieties of Munson grapes under cultivation. "I'm down to half a dozen today, and I just started them a few years ago," he said. "I have the Carmen, R.W. Munson, Manito, and, of course, the America, which is the finest wine grape he had that I know of," Foster continued.
Foster said when his family were in the grape business they sold 100,000 cuttings a year. "We sold them to Texas, Oklahoma, and to nurseries in Florida back in the pre-prohibition days," recalled Foster.

Foster said it will take at least seven years for any grape planting project here to produce its first grapes. "You can't rush Mother Nature," he said. "You make your cuttings in the winter, tie them up in bunches of 100, and bury them in the ground, lightly under the surface," he said.
"There were hundreds of acres of grapes grown in these areas in the early 1900s and until prohibition hit," Foster continued. "Everyone was growing grapes and making wine and selling it.
"I have five acres of grapes, my father had 15 acres. We had the America, Carmen, Margaretta, Ellen Scott, Fern, and others. I remember having an old hand-cranked mill for separating the juice from the grapes. I sold the juice in bulk and people made wine and jellies out of it," he said.
Foster said T.V. Munson used to walk miles up and down both banks of the Red River, into the hills of Arkansas and Missouri. "He was searching for wild grapes," said Foster.
"You allow them to stay in the ground until around March 10, and then you take the cuttings out. By then you must have your ground prepared," Foster said. "Planting a vineyard is a backbreaking chore," Foster continued. "Three persons can work most efficiently. One drops the vine, the other punches the hole and tips the vine in it, and the third one comes behind and firmly stomps the ground around the vine."
Foster said grapes must be trellised. "I've always used the Kniffin system, as opposed to the Munson system. I did it simply because it wasn't as much work. For example, the Munson system requires three wires, one attached to a two-by-four cross arm, and the other two attached to each end of the cross arm. The new growth is put on the two extended wires and the old growth is kept tied to the top or center wire. This forms a canopy or shade for the grapes," he said.
"The Kniffin system uses two wires, one about two feet above the other. The old growth is tied to the bottom wire, the new on top," he said.
"T.V. Munson even advised tying a wire to the ground about every 100 feet," he said. "This provided a ground so if lightning ever hit the arbor, it would not travel on the wires and kill the vines."
Foster had a couple of bits of advice for Denison area grape enthusiasts. "Don't plant Concord grapes," he said. "We're too far south. They don't ripen properly, they just hang on the vine."
And he said Thompson seedless was another [variety] that shouldn't be tried here. "The humidity is too high. It needs a dry, desert country. When tried here, it develops a fungus that not only spoils grapes, but the fungus kills the vine," he said.
One last word. Munson has specific instructions in his book for spraying. Foster summed up his impression of that in two words: "It works!"

Thomas Volney Munson was a tall, distinguished, good-looking man, imposing even in his work clothes.
"He was the kind of man that drew a second look, no matter how many times you had seen him," recalled Horace Foster, a fourth-generation nurseryman and horticulturist who probably is the last living person who worked for the late Munson.
"He was a gentle man, with a quick smile. He was scholarly appearing, rather dignified. He was the kind of man who would stand out in any crowd," Foster remembered.
Foster worked only a few years before Munson's death in 1913. "I was not quite 17 years old when he died," said the 17-year-old Foster. "I remember him, yet I know I can't remember things I should."
Foster admitted that today, probably a lot of his memories of Munson relate to things his father might have told him about Munson.
"My father used to tell me about trips Munson would make to seek new varieties of grapes. He would be gone three weeks at a time, traveling I guess by wagon since I never remember seeing him astride a horse. I don't remember ever being told whether or not he went alone or had someone along. I would think it would be the latter, because we did have problems with Indians in those days," he said.
Foster said since he recalls stories of Munson's journeys after grapes, "I doubt seriously if he thought about the perils he might possibly encounter with Indians or brigands or even the elements. There were constant floods in those days, especially along the Red River where he made many trips."
Foster said Munson probably was one of the nation's first "weekend campers, as a lot of his trips were for short durations. And even on the longer trips, he had to rough it. "But there was plenty of wild fruits and berries and even wild game. I never knew him to wear a sidearm, so I assume he or a companion acquired the game in some other manner," said Foster. "But with Munson's horticulture knowledge there was no way he would starve in the woods."
Munson reports in one of his earlier catalogs that he had covered perhaps 40,000 miles in search of grapes. "I would guess that he went on his trips in a wagon. There always were places where he could get close to where he wanted to go and then he would walk the rest of the way.
"He wore work clothes—pants and a shirt—although overalls were the order of the day at that time. But I don't ever remember seeing him in overalls," recalled Roster.
Foster remembered Munson as being "clean shaven. I never saw him with a beard," he said. Munson's early pictures show him with a full black beard, then a beard that turned grey, and finally clean shaven. His grandson, Volney Acheson, said he probably grew his beard "as a young man to look older, and then shaved it off when as an older man he wanted to look younger."
Munson's catalogs hinted at his poor health, yet Foster can recall only the manly stature and the fact that he worked right along in the vineyards and nursery with everyone else.
Munson came to Denison because the Nebraska grape venture was frozen out. He had visited here earlier; had a brother, W. B. Munson, here; and was familiar with the soil and felt it would be ideal for his grape ventures.
"We shipped grapevines and other nursery products out of Denison by Wells-Fargo Express, American Express, and Parcel Post," Foster said. "I assume all reached their destination, although the buyers probably had to go to the depot or express office in the nearest town for them because we had no rural free delivery in those days. "We shipped hundreds and hundreds of plants and vines each year. I can't recall how many, but I know during the shipping season we were a very busy bunch."
Foster said the vines and plants were shipped all over the country. "Everybody in this part of the country grew Munson grapes," he said. "I guess if prohibition hadn't of come along, grapes would easily be the biggest income crop today."
Foster said there were the table grapes and the wine grapes. Some of the most popular table grapes were Ellen Scott—which he said was named for Munson's wife and was his personal favorite—Rommel, Dusty Rose, Delicatessen, Gold Coin, Big Extra, and Fern Munson, to name a few.
"We used to pick them in five-pound baskets. They were shipped out and also sold locally to stores and even at the old trade yards on Woodard Street," Foster recalled. "The Big Extra was one of the more popular grapes with customers. It was a big black grape."
Foster said there was little doubt but that the success of the Munson grapes played a role in the coming of prohibition. "The fact is that Munson grew the best wine grapes of anybody anywhere," Foster said. "After prohibition came in, it absolutely ruined the grape business here and everywhere.
The veteran Denison nurseryman admitted that most people in the Denison area considered Munson "just another nurseryman. All of the honors that were given him by the French government for saving the wine industry never made much of a splash here. But then you never are known locally like you are off yonder," Foster continued.
Foster said Munson's son, Will B., kept the nursery going long after his father's death in 1913. "And for years orders would come in for vines that had appeared in earlier catalogs, but they still had the vines," he said.
Foster said Munson's life was built around "his grapes and his family. You could tell that by the way he named his grapes after those he loved," Foster said. "He had friends who came to see him, but they were mostly people interested in grapes."
Foster said the Carmen was one of the finest wine vines that Munson had. "And he was quick to admit this," recalled Foster.
Munson was an avid note taker, and Foster said he never ventured into the vineyards without his pencil and notebook. He would check vines and fruit and make copious notes on what he saw.
Foster said Munson was a great man for quoting mottos: "'Eternal vigilance is the price of success' is one I remember, and another is 'Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.' The one thing that T.V. Munson had a lot of was enthusiasm about his family and his grapes," Foster added.
The interest today in Munson stems from the creation of the T.V. Munson Memorial Vineyard by the W.B. Munson Foundation. It is a belated honor to the man credited with saving the French grape industry in the late 1800s from a root louse. He was only the second American to get the French Legion of Honor for his work, the first being Thomas Alva Edison.