A History of Wine in America, Volume 1: From the Beginnings to Prohibition

Preface

Preface This history is a first attempt to tell the story of grape growing and winemaking in the United States from the beginning and in detail. Now that winegrowing in the United States has succeeded so brilliantly after long years of frustration, and now that it is beginning once again to spread to nearly every state in the union, it seems to me particularly fitting that the many obscure and forgotten people and their work lying behind that success should be brought out into the light. It is also instructive to see how many names celebrated in other connections also belong to the story of American winegrowing, from Captain John Smith onwards. Even more important, a knowledge of the difficulties they faced and of the work they did will help us to understand better the success that has at last been achieved. At any rate, that is the conviction from which this history has been written. The struggle to make the New World yield wine such as they had known in Europe was begun by the earliest settlers and was persisted in for generations, only to end in defeat over and over again. Few things can have been more eagerly tried and more thoroughly frustrated in American history than the enterprise of growing European varieties of grapes for the making of wine. Not until it was recognized that only the native grape varieties could succeed against the endemic diseases and harsh climate of North America did winemaking have a chance in the eastern part of the country. That recognition came slowly and was made reluctantly . Then, midway through the nineteenth century, the colonization and development of California transformed the situation. In California the European grape flourished, and the state quickly became a bountiful source of wines resembling the familiar European types. At the same time, the development of new hybrid grapes and an accumulating experience in winemaking produced a variety of wines in the diverse conditions of the country outside of California. By the beginning of the twentieth century the growing of grapes and the making of wine across the United States was a proven and important economic activity. The hopes of the first settlers, after nearly three centuries of trial, defeat, and renewed effort, were at last realized. Then came national Prohibition, apparently putting an end to the story at one stroke. Such, in barest outline, is the story that this history fills out in detail. The choice of the era of national Prohibition as the stopping point of the story was not my original intention, but it came to seem inevitable as I learned more about the subject. There are deep continuities that hold together the history of XV xvi PREFACE American winegrowing before and after Prohibition. But the story since Repeal is distinctly different. The industry faced different problems, had different opportunities , and developed along lines that could not have been foreseen in the preProhibition era. More to the point, the very recentness of the period means that its story could not be told on the same scale that was possible for the years before Prohibition: we know too much about it, and any adequate account of the past fifty years would simply overwhelm the narrative of the beginnings. So the story of American winegrowing since Prohibition will have to be another book. Perhaps the most striking fact that I have learned in writing this book is how little is known about the subject. There is a history of winegrowing to be written for almost every state in the nation, and frequently there is room for more localized histories as well. For the most part, the work remains undone. I have therefore had to depend all too frequently on my own resources. I sincerely hope that one effect of this book—perhaps the most important one that it can have—is to stimulate others to take up the historical inquiry. The gaps, distortions, misunderstandings, and mistakes of my own work will then be revealed, but the history of an important and fascinating subject will be much better served. I have not been without the invaluable help of predecessors, however. First among them I would name two distinguished botanists and writers, Liberty Hyde Bailey and Ulysses Premiss Hedrick. Bailey's Sketch of the Evolution of Our Native Fruits (1898) is only a modest item in the vast production of its author, and the section devoted to grapes is only a part of the Sketch. Nevertheless, it remains an...