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The Rise Of American Wine
AFTER TRYING TO PRODUCE DRINKABLE WINE for three hundred years, we finally got the hang of it—so effectively that in the last quarter-century our results have raised the quality of winemaking all over the world
December 1996 | Volume 47, Issue 8
Plenty would change in Europe over the next twenty years, but the most radical change of all was the rise of American wine—both in terms of quality and in terms of influence and renown. In one sense the rise was meteoric, so much so that the United States today has become arguably the most important winemaking country in the world. Yet wine had been produced in North America ever since the late 1600s, so in another sense the rise was a long time coming. For more than three centuries American wine had seen success only in fits and starts, with small victories almost invariably followed by large defeats. Then, seemingly all of a sudden, came the dizzying achievements of the last quarter-century. How did everything change so quickly? The answer is paradoxically but quintessentially American. On the one hand, the winemaking entrepreneurs whose work inspired the rise advocated individual self-reliance. Like so many Americans in so many fields before them, they believed that their present success had little, if anything, to do with past accomplishment. On the other hand, those same winemakers wanted nothing more than to create a tradition and establish a legacy. They believed that no accomplishment was too great for American nature, and they considered it their mission to make history from the fruit of that nature—American wine from grapes grown in American vineyards.
Others kept trying. One of the most dedicated attempts was made by an Ohioan named Nicholas Longworth (1782-1863), who experimented with all sorts of imported vines in all sorts of soils and locations. He too failed. “I have tried the foreign grapes extensively for wine at great expense,” he admitted in 1843, “and not a single plant is left in my vineyards. I would advise the cultivation of native grapes alone.” Longworth certainly took his own advice. He planted extensive vineyards in the Ohio Valley near Cincinnati, concentrating on the Catawba grape, a hybrid cross between pure labrusca and vinifera . There he produced America’s first commercially successful wine, a sweet “Sparkling Catawba” that developed a considerable following. Comparisons with European wine were inevitable, and some Americans went so far as to judge Longworth’s wine superior even to Champagne. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gave voice to this vinous version of manifest destiny in an 1854 poem titled “Catawba Wine,” part of which reads: