The History of American wine began when first Europeans to explore parts of North America which they called Vinland because of the profusion of grape vines they found. However, settlers would later discover that the wine made from the various native grapes had flavors which were unfamiliar and which they did not like. This led to repeated efforts to grow familiar Vitis vinifera varieties. The first vines of Vitis vinifera origin planted in what is now the United States were planted in Senecu in 1629, which is near the present day town of San Antonio, New Mexico.
However, the discovery in 1802 of the native Catawba grape led to very successful wine-making in Ohio. By 1842 Nicholas Longworth was growing 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) of Catawba grapes and making the country's first Sparkling wine. In 1858, The Illustrated London News described Catawba as "a finer wine of the hock species and flavor than any hock that comes from the Rhine" and wrote that sparkling Catawba "transcends the Champagne of France." But the successful operations in Ohio ceased when fungus disease destroyed the vineyards. Some growers responded by moving north to the shores of Lake Erie and its islands, where mildew was not a problem. The Finger Lakes region of New York State developed a successful wine-making industry beginning in the early 1860s when the Pleasant Valley Wine Company began using carefully selected derivatives of native grapes to produce wine. In 1865 the Urbana Wine Company (which marketed its wine under the Gold Seal label) was established. In 1872, O-Neh-Da Vineyard was established by the late Bishop Bernard McQuaid, on the shores of Hemlock Lake, to make pure grape wine for his churches. 1880 saw the establishment of the Taylor Wine Company. By the late 19th century, wines from the Finger Lakes were winning prizes at wine tastings in Europe.
Read more about History Of American Wine: California Wine, Prohibition
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, american and/or wine:
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“It is not more people that are needed in the world but better people, physically, morally and mentally. This question of raising the quality of our American population must also be taken into account in the question of immigration.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“Say that the men of the old black tower
Though they but feed as the goatherd feeds,
Their money spent, their wine gone sour,
Lack nothing that a soldier needs,
That all are oath-bound men;
Those banners come not in.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)