American Wine - History

History

The first Europeans to explore North America called it Vinland because of the profusion of grape vines they found. The earliest wine made in what is now the United States was from the Scuppernong grapes by French Huguenot settlers at a settlement near Jacksonville, Florida between 1562 and 1564. In the early American colonies of Virginia and the Carolinas, wine making was an official goal laid out in their founding charters. 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 beginning with the Virginia Company exporting of French vinifera vines with French vignerons to Virginia in 1619. These early plantings were met with failure as native pest and vine disease ravaged the vineyards. In 1683, William Penn planted a vineyard of French vinifera in Pennsylvania that may have interbred with a native Vitis labrusca vine to create the hybrid grape Alexander. One of the first commercial wineries in the United States was founded in Indiana in 1806 with production of wine made from the Alexander grape. Today French-American hybrid grapes are the staples of wine production on the East Coast of the United States.

The first commercial vineyard and winery in the United States was established by an act of the Kentucky General Assembly on November 21, 1799. The vinedresser for the vineyard was John James Dufour formerly of Vevey, Switzerland (same authority as above). The vineyard was located overlooking the Kentucky River in Jessamine County, Kentucky and was named First Vineyard by Dufour on November 5, 1798. The vineyard's current address in 5800 Sugar Creek Pike, Nicholasville, Kentucky. The first wine from the First Vineyard was consumed by the subscribers at John Postelthwaite's house on March 21, 1803. Two 5 gallon oak casks of wine were taken to President Thomas Jefferson in Washington, D.C. in February 1805. The vineyard continued until 1809 when a killing freeze in May destroyed the crop and many vines at the First Vineyard. The Dufour family then relocated to Vevay, Indiana after the abandonment of the First Vineyard.

In California, the first vineyard and winery was established by the Franciscan missionary Junípero Serra near San Diego in 1769. Later missionaries would carry the vines northward, with Sonoma's first vineyard being planted around 1805. California has two native grape varieties, but they make very poor quality wine. Therefore, the missionaries used the Mission grape, which is called criolla or "colonialized European" in South America. Although a Vitis vinifera variety, it is a grape of "very modest" quality. Jean-Louis Vignes was one of the early settlers to use higher quality vinifera in his vineyard near Los Angeles.

The first commercially successful winery in the United States was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in the mid-1830s by Nicholas Longworth, who made a sparkling wine from Catawba grapes. In the 1860s, vineyards in the Ohio River Valley were attacked by Black rot. This prompted several winemakers to move north to the Finger Lakes region of New York. During this time, the Missouri wine industry, centered around the German colony in Hermann, Missouri, took off and was soon second to California in wine production. In the late 19th century, the phylloxera epidemic in the West and Pierce's disease in the East ravaged the growing American wine industry.

Prohibition in the United States began when the state of Maine became the first state to go completely dry in 1846; it culminated in the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920 which forbade the manufacturing, sale and transport of alcohol. Exceptions were made for sacramental wine used for religious purposes and some wineries were able to maintain their facilities under those auspices. Others resorted to bootlegging. Home winemaking also became common, allowed through exemptions for sacramental wines and production for home use.

Following the repeal of Prohibition, American wine making reemerged in very poor condition. Many talented winemakers had died, vineyards had been neglected or replanted with table grapes, and Prohibition had changed Americans' taste in wines. Consumers now demanded cheap "jug wine" (so-called dago red) and sweet, fortified (high alcohol) wine. Before Prohibition dry table wines outsold sweet wines by three to one, but after the ratio was more than reversed. In 1935, 81% of California's production was sweet wines.

Leading the way to new methods was research conducted at the University of California, Davis and some of the state universities in New York. Faculty at the universities published reports on which varieties of grapes grew best in which regions, held seminars on winemaking techniques, consulted with grape growers and winemakers, offered academic degrees in viticulture, and promoted the production of quality wines. In the 1970s and 1980s, success by Californian winemakers help to secure foreign investment dollars from other winemaking regions, most notably the Champenois. Changing taste in the American palate has also helped to foster this growth, with 668 million gallons (25.3 million hectoliters) of wine being consumed in the United States in 2004. Today the American wine industry faces the growing challenges of expanding international exports and dealing with domestic regulations on interstate sales and shipment of wine.