The History of American Wine

Grapes have been growing in the North American continent for a very long time — long before any European stepped foot on American soil. Let’s see how America grew from a region with poor grapes to the world’s fourth largest wine producing country.

Colonial Times and Early East Coast

The United States still celebrates Christopher Columbus day, even though he never set foot on North American soil. That’s right. He only made it as far as the Caribbean. Honestly, I can understand why he stopped, it’s beautiful and warm down there. Also, another face-melter, his ships weren’t even really called the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria^[1]. So disappointing. So how does a man who never stepped foot on American soil impact the wine history of the country? Well, before we get there, let’s talk about the real earlier discover of America — Leif Eriksson. Upon landing on the Northeastern coast of the North American continent around 1000 AD, his party began to explore the area. All but one man, the only German to join the party, called Tyrker, returned within a few hours. Leif led a search party to find the missing man…

But they had not gone far, when they met him, laden down with grapes. Upon their enquiry, where he had stayed so long, he answered: “I did not go far, when I found the trees all covered with grapes; and as I was born in a country, whose hills are covered with vineyards, it seemed so much like home to me, that I stayed a while and gathered them.” … And Leif gave a name to the country, and called it Vinland, or Wineland.”^[2]

Over 500 years after Leif’s first landing on American soil, we can get back to Christopher Columbus. Although he never really made it to America, he did establish a permanent settlement in the Caribbean for the Spanish. The Spanish used the settlement as a launching point into Central America for their entradas. Entradas were expeditions for discovery, conquest, and/or colonization of new territory. One of the more notable entradas was the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. The conquest of the Aztecs started in February 1519 and lasted until August 13, 1521 when the Spanish conquered the Aztec capitol city of Tenochtitlan. The success of the Spanish in the Central America reinforced a rivalry with the French and British for dominance in the New World.

The Spanish were the first to claim Florida (La Florida). There were several failed colonization attempts by the Spanish, one which resulted in the death of famed explored Juan Ponce de León. In the end, it was the French Huguenots, French Protestants who followed the Reformed traditions of Protestantism, who established Floride française in an attempt to escape persecution. It was at their colony, Fort Caroline, or the modern city of Jacksonville, where Americas first wine was made in 1562. Their wine was made from the scuppernong grape, a variety of muscadine, which is native to the area^[3].

Not long after the Huguenots, the British started colonizing the New World. Their first attempt was the Roanoke Colony, also known as the Lost Colony. First established in 1584, then re-established within the same decade, the colony was found abandoned in August of 1590. However, on Roanoke Island, you can still find the Mothervine, a large scuppernong vine that was first recorded in the 1720s, but is undoubtedly far older than that.

In 1607, the very successful colony of Jamestown was established by the London Company (also known as the Virginia Company). By 1620 the colony had established its own vineyards after receiving French vinifera vines the previous year. These vines were brought over due to the local grapes producing wines which were said to have flavors “reminiscent of farm animals.”^[4] Unfortunately local pests and disease spread quickly to the young vines and destroyed most of the vineyard. Attempting to improve their situation, local winemakers started to interbreed the French vines with local vines to produce a hearty crop that would withstand the American pests and diseases, while keeping the flavors of the well-known imported vines. The first of these breeds, the Alexander grape, was an accidental cross between a Vitis vinifera vine that was being grown in a proper vineyard, mixed with a local wild Vitis labrusca vine. This cross grew in the vineyard of Thomas Penn (the son of William Penn, founder of the state of Pennsylvania) and is named after his gardener, James Alexander.

Once it was proven that cross-bred grapes could produce a wine that was disease resistant and tastier than the local varieties, the wine industry started to grow. The first commercial vineyard was establish in the newly-independent United States in 1799. The vineyard of John James Dufour, appropriately named the “First Vineyard” in Kentucky survived only a decade before an unusually cold freeze in May destroyed his crop and vines. The First Vineyard was abandoned as the Dufour family moved to Indiana.

Also at the turn of the 19th century, the Catawba grape was discovered. It is a grape that can be used not only for wine-making but also for juice, jam, and jelly. Since it was useful in many ways, it became the most widely planted variety in the United States.

Nicholas Longworth, a banker and winemaker from Cincinnati, Ohio founded what is considered to be the first successful commercial American vineyard. His Catawba grapes, planted on the hillside of Mount Adams, were used to make both still and sparkling wine. During the middle of the 1800’s, Longworth’s wines received a lot of praise from California to Europe. In 1859, Catawba production peaked in Ohio, producing more than 568,000 gallons of wine. At the time, Ohio was the largest wine producing state in the country. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow even published a work dedicated to Longworth and his grapes:

For richest and best
Is the wine of the West,
That grows by the Beautiful River;
Whose sweet perfume
Fills all the room
With a benison on the giver.

…

Very good in its way
Is the Verzenay,
Or the Sillery soft and creamy;
But Catawba wine
Has a taste more divine,
More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy.

…

While pure as a spring
Is the wine I sing,
And to praise it, one needs but name it;
For Catawba wine
Has need of no sign,
No tavern-bush to proclaim it.

– an excerpt from Ode to Catawba Wine by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A Push to the West

While the British Colonies on the East Coast were hitting their stride, the Spanish were working out on the West Coast. Spanish Catholic missionaries established the first vineyard in California in 1683. These first vineyards out west grew the Mission grape for making sacramental wine. For about 150 years, the Mission, or Criolla, grape was the only grape grown in vineyards in California. In 2006, the DNA of the Mission grape was found to match that of the Spanish Listan Prieto grape.

The California Gold Rush, during the middle of the 19th century, drew a large number of immigrants to Northern California and more specifically San Francisco. This created a large demand for wine in the region as well. Many of today’s more famous wine regions in Northern California got their start during this time, including:  Sutter County, Yuba County, Butte County, Trinity County, El Dorado County, Lake County, Napa County, Sonoma County, Merced, and Stockton^[5].

An advertisement for Sonoma wine from 1889. Credit: archive.org

An advertisement for a wine press from 1889. Credit: archive.org

Phylloxera

The phylloxera insect, a sap-sucking bug that fees on roots and leaves of grapevines is native to the United States. Most vine species native to the North American continent have developed natural defenses to repel the insect. Since there is no way to treat or cure phylloxera, many European vines have been grafted with American vines to gain some phylloxera resistance. In Europe, these grafted varieties are generally banned or strongly discouraged from use in the higher quality wine varieties.

Phylloxera was brought over to Europe accidentally by English botanists collected American vine samples and brought them back to Europe in the 1850s. The estimates are that during the pylloxera epidemic in the second half of the 19th century, somewhere between 66 – 90% of all European vineyards were destroyed.

Prohibition

Fortunately, the phylloxera epidemic did not impact the United States industry, but instead it was decimated by law. During WWI, Wartime Prohibition was enacted in 1919. The following year, congress passed the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, followed by the Volstead Act (over President Wilosn’s veto), which forbid “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof…”

Prohibition hit the vineyards hard, but there were loopholes. The first exception of the Volstead Act was the rescinding of the extremely restrictive definition of an “intoxicating liquor”. In the Volstead Act, the definition was anything over 0.5% alcohol by volume. If someone were to stick to this stingy amount, they would also not be able to eat popular foods, like honey buns, hot sauce, or sauerkraut.

The first way that people got around prohibition was that anything purchased before the laws went into place was legal for personal consumption. People, including the US President Warren G. Harding, started buying up high volumes of alcohol to store and slowly consume after prohibition went into effect.

One loophole for making liquor during prohibition was that farmers were legally allowed to preserve their fruits and grapes. This meant that farmers were allowed to make things like hard cider and then into apple jack. This loophole ended up being one of the most influential ways that people were able to get around prohibition laws. A household could produce up to 200 gallons of intoxication cider every year as long as it was claimed to be a bi-product of fruit preservation.

Another loophole was that it was very easy for medical professionals to prescribe liquor as a medicinal treatment. During prohibition, medicinal alcohol sales increased 400%^[6].

“In 1917, the American Medical Association — supporting Prohibition — said there was no reason at all to use alcohol as a therapeutic remedy of any kind. Then they realized with this loophole that there was an opportunity to make some money. And capitalism abhors a vacuum. Within two or three years, you could go into virtually any city in the country and buy a prescription for $3 from your local physician and then take it to your local pharmacy and go home with a pint of liquor every 10 days. And this is really how many of the large distilleries in Kentucky and the middle of the country stayed in business throughout the Prohibition years.”^[7] – Daniel Okrent, NPR interview

The third loophole was for sacramental wine. The rules entitled 10 gallons of wine per year for every adult. People would pretend to be a rabbi or a priest just to get this allotment of wine, claiming to be distributing it to bogus religious congregations. Additionally, some people joined a congregation simply to have access to wine.

As the repeal of prohibition started to look imminent, the wine industry quickly reacted. The first wines to appear though, were of poor quality. Fortified wines were the best sellers after repeal in 1933. Fortified wines represented 3 of every 4 gallons of wine shipped. It took another 35 years before table wines finally out-sold fortified wines.

Rebuilding Americas Wine Industry

Prohibition threw a large wrench in the American wine industry. It took pioneers like André Tchelistcheff, Robert Mondavi, and others to bring back fine wines. Rebuilding also required the help of higher education facilities. Universities in California and New York helped growers understand which grapes would be particularly successful in a particular region, offered classes on wine-making techniques, and started programs for degrees related to viticulture^[5]. As these positive changes took hold, foreign investment started rolling in. In 1976, at the Paris Wine Tasting, or what is now called the “Judgement of Paris”, California caught the world’s attention by beating out French wines in a blind taste test. After the results were revealed, one French judge tried to retract her ballot and began to criticize the event.

Today, the United States is the fourth largest producing country in the world, behind the European juggernauts France, Italy, and Spain. However, the United States is the largest consumer of wine in the world, edging out France and Germany. On a per capita basis, the United States doesn’t perform very well, only consuming 10.33 liters per person on an annual basis. Compare that to many European countries where they drink twice as much, with some even reaching upwards of 44 liters per person.

Native Grapes

Within the genus Vitis, there are eight species of grapes. The Vitis vinifera is native to Europe, Vitis amurensis is native to Asia, and the other six are native to the Americas. None of the six major grape species native to the United States are a major source of wine today and all major common wine varieties that you are likely familiar with are Vitis vinifera. Let us focus on the American grapes and see how they fit in the wine landscape today.

Vitis labrusca 

Grapes that fall into the labrusca, or fox grape, are native to the eastern part of North America. Varieties of fox grape include Catawba, Concord, Delaware, Isabella, Niagara. Additionally there are many hybrid grape varieties such as Agawam, Alexander, and Onaka that fall within this family.

The main characteristic of fox grape family is the “slip-skin”, which as the term implies allows the skin of the grape to fall off when squeezed. The other main characteristic is the musky smell. The term “foxy” ended up being a commonly used term for describing the strong, earthy smell for which the grape was named. Scientists isolated the compound that gives these grapes the foxy musk and identified the compound as methyl anthranilate, which is a naturally occurring bird repellent. It is also used for flavoring grape Kool-Aid, candy, gum, and in perfumes.

Vitis riparia

Commonly referred to as either the riverbank grape or the frost grape, this vine is native to northeastern United States, but can be found as far south as Texas. This grape is known for its ability to resist diseases like mildew, black rot, and phylloxera. It was often used to graft with Vitis vinifera to promote disease resistance. Bacchus, Baco Noir, Elvira, Frontenac, Marechal Foch, and Triomphe d’Alsace are all grape varieties which fall into this family. The high acidity, pigment of its juice, and overly herbaceous aromas have prevented this species from being sustainable for wine-making. It is more commonly used in jams and jellies.

Vitis rotundifolia

Also known as the muscadine grape, this species is native the southeastern coast of the United States. The species has been cultivated since the Huguenots landed in Florida in the 1500s and is known to benefit from the hot weather seen in its native climate. There are over 300 types of muscadine grapes grown today. The Mothervine, in North Carolina, is the oldest known grape vine in the United States and it produces muscadine grapes. Black Beauty, Carlos, Cowart, Flowers, Fry, Granny Val, Ison, James, Jumbo, Magnolia, Memory, Mish, Nesbitt, Scuppernong, Summit, Supreme, and Thomas grapes all fall into this family. These are often used as dessert wines as sugar is typically added during the wine-making process.

Vitis aestivalis

Native to the eastern half of the United States, the summer grape or pigeon grape prefers a drier climate. This family has lower acidity and a more European flavor profile compared to other grape species native to North America. The most common grape of this species is the Norton, which is grown most frequently in the Midwest United States. The Norton grape dominated commercial production in the 1800s.

Vitis rupestris

A species of many names, this family is more like a bush than most vines. It grows well in sunny riverbanks. It is classified as a threatened or endangered by Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Rupestris also goes by the names July, sand, sugar, beach, bush, currant, ingar, rock, and mountain grape. It has also been extensively used as a root stock to help European vines resist disease. Chancellor, DeChaunac, Aurore, Vidal Blanc, and Vignoles are grapes that are hybridized versions of French grapes and Vitis rupestris.

Vitis mustangensis

The mustang grape, which is native to the southern United States still grows strong in Texas. Unfortunately the grapes from this family are highly acidic and very bitter. The grapes are also a skin irritant. Wines with this family were most popular prior to, and during, the American Civil War. Today they are not used much other than for jams and jellies, which require a lot of sugar to make them enjoyable.

America’s Appellation System

Prior to the mid-1970s, the United States appellations were based simply on political boundaries. They were classified by states and counties. In 1978 that changed with the system of Approved Viticultural Areas (AVAs) published by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). The ATF at that time was part of the United States Department of the Treasury and they were looking to supplement the old system.

AVAs in the United States do not govern the varieties grown, styles of wine, or other types of restrictions. The main point of the AVA is that at least 85% of the grapes used in a wine must come from that AVA if it is to be labeled as such. There is also no rule for adding the “AVA” term after listing a geographical area, so it can be difficult to know if the wine region that your wine is from actually carries any official weight.

The first AVA that was established in the United States was from … can you guess? Missouri! I know, not what I would have picked either. The Augusta AVA was established in June of 1980. According to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) which maintains the official list of AVAs, there are now no fewer than 240 with more awaiting official status. That means that there are too many to talk about here. You can sort through the list and see what your state has.

Sources:

1) 5 Unbelievable Facts About Christopher Columbus
Alison Eldridge - https://www.britannica.com/list/5-unbelievable-facts-about-christopher-columbus
2) Husmann, G. (1866). The Cultivation of the Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines. New York, NY: Woodward.
3) Stevenson, T. (2005). The Sotheby's Wine Encclopedia (4th ed.). New York, NY: Dorling Kindersley.
4) Vintage America: A Brief History of Wine in America
     Talia Baiocchi - https://www.eater.com/2011/1/3/6703783/vintage-america-a-brief-history-of-wine-in-america
5) Carosso, Vincent P. The California Wine Industry 1830-1895. University of California Press. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951. Pages 16-20.
6) Worth, Richard. Teetotalers and Saloon Smashers: the Temperance Movement and Prohibition. Berkely Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2009. Print.
7) Gross, T. (Writer). (2011, June 10). Prohibition: Speakeasies, Loopholes And Politics [Transcript, Radio series episode]. In Fresh Air. Philadelphia, PA: National Public Radio.