Walter Channing, Founder of Channings Daughters Winery, Dies at 74

Walter Channing, founder and partner of Channing Daughters winery in Bridgehampton, passed away on Thursday, March 12 at the Hamptons Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Southampton of complications from fronto-temporal dementia. He was 74.

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts where he went to local schools and adopted his father’s hobby of working with wood, according to his bio on the Channing Daughters website.

He was constantly rebuilding the house and spent his summer vacations doing tree surgery, working for a building contractor and programming computers.

He graduated from Harvard College and the Business School.

After graduating, Channing moved to New York City and became involved in healthcare consulting and later venture capital investing in start-up medical businesses.

He became a founder and partner in C.W. Group, a venture capital business focusing on investments and business development in the healthcare, biotechnology, and managed-care provider service sectors based in New York City.

C.W. Group, its first fund started in 1983, has invested in over 40 companies and has acted as lead investor or originator of 25, according to Channing’s bio.

He was a member of the Venture Advisory Committee of the Brigham and Womens’s Hospital in Boston and the Center For The Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at The Harvard School of Public Health.

In 1982, Channing planted his first Chardonnay vines at his Bridgehampton farm.

In his spare time, he would recover and rework discarded materials.

During the demolition of the Hudson River piers, hundreds of feet of strong seasoned wood were scheduled to be hauled out to sea for burning, but Channing stashed away as much of it as he could.

Over the next few years, the wood was reborn as furniture, interior walls and art objects, all illustrating the form and quality of the original wood, according to his bio.

Later, he retrieved discarded trees from the East Hampton dump which led to a new medium: roots and trunk forms.

More recently he created his own personal dump in Bridgehampton to have on hand a ready inventory.

Channing’s work has been shown since 1975 at such places as the O.K. Harris Gallery, the Webb and Parsons Gallery, Handschin Gallery, Basel, Switzerland; the Indianapolis Museum of Fine Arts and the Root Art Center, Hamilton College, according to his bio.

Other shows included: the Squibb Gallery in Princeton, New Jersey, and the Elaine Benson and Louise Himmelfarb Galleries in the Hamptons and he also routinely shows his work at the annual Century Association’s Sculpture Show in New York City.

His more recent work included inverted, whole trees mounted on scaffolding, chain saw carvings, wood “Berms”, and curvilinear stacking of wood and some of these portray tree roots in an anthropomorphized form, acting like and even imitating humans.

Channing had a studio is in Bridgehampton where he worked on his art.

Larry Perrine, also a founding partner, and winemaker, in the Bridgehampton winery, told Edible East End:

“Walter Channing was a charismatic, wildly talented businessman and artist. A true character. My partner of 20 years and my best friend. He planted his first vines here in Bridgehampton in 1982. He gave us free rein to create Channing Daughters Winery according to our dreams and visions. He was proud of our accomplishments. As I got older and developed the winery, I hired younger, very talented people and stood back and supported them. Walter encouraged me to ‘bask in the reflected glory of the younger folks you hire for the next generation. It is not about ego.’ He leaves a remarkable legacy of family, art and wine for all of us.”

According to The East Hampton Star, Channing is survived by his wife of 25 years, Molly Seagrave, his four daughters, Francesca Channing and Isabella Channing of New York City; and Sylvia Channing and Cornelia Channing of Bridgehampton.