Viticulture and Viniculture in the Southeastern United States

Southeastern Geographer Vol. 27, No. 2, November 1987, pp. 115-130 VITICULTURE AND VINICULTURE IN THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES H.J. de BUj Viticulture has been described as "the most geographically expressive of all agricultural industries." (I) The growing of grapes for the purpose of making wine involves terrain and tradition, climate and culture, experience and experiment. Viticulture is not simply another kind of farming. As the ripening grape's sugar content and acid balance change, environmental hazards to the vintage intensify. Every harvest becomes an exercise in game theory in which timing is the key. Thus the creation of a superior wine is not merely a matter of harvesting the crop and packaging the product. It is a complex process that begins in the vineyard , continues in the winery, and concludes in the bottle. Such a wine can be one of civilization's highest achievements, a work of art as well as science; it is to the senses of smell and taste what painting is to the eye and music to the ear. Quintessentially, wine is a progeny of geography, physical and human. Wine has been defined as a "summation of its region of origin, a capsule of culture." (2) The geography of wine has been characterized as an "experience of place." (3). Winegrowing in the Southeastern United States is an old industry, but is is only now maturing. This paper identifies the salient ampelographic , environmental, and stylistic patterns of Southeastern viticulture , and tests the notion that a "Dixie" wine region can be delimited on these grounds, as has recently been proposed. (4) HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY: VINE AND PLACE. The first organized viniculture in the North American realm took place in what is today the U.S. Southeast. (5) The time was the 16th century, the place may have been east coastal Florida or South Carolina. The grape, undoubtedly, was a native American, one of the Muscadines. "Nowhere else in the world," writes a historian of viticulture, "grows a grape so fragrant that the early navigators, approaching the coast in September, detected its Dr. de BUj is Professor of Geography at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL 33124. 116Southeastern Geographer rich scent long before they made landfall." (6) The Scuppernong, growing wild and bearing heavily, offered the settlers the first opportunity to practice an art left long behind. (7) Southeastern viticulture received a vital stimulus with the arrival of thousands of French Huguenot refugees during the 17th and 18th centuries . The map of South Carolina still carries the imprints of this immigration . The town of Bordeaux (founded as New Bordeau), named after France's famous wine center, was established by the Huguenots who, in 1764, were awarded 30,000 acres by the British government. The objective of this land grant was to develop a grape and wine industry along the upper Savannah River. (S) Louis de Saint Pierre, a winegrower and oenologist, wrote what may be the first treatise on viticulture in the Southeast. (9) In 1782 he sent the first consignment ofAmerican wine to the English market. The favorable reception of these wines led the French, who feared for the future of their wine exports to England, to intervene. They bribed South Carolina's Lord Proprietor, who stopped subsidizing the New Bordeau wineries. (10) The impact on the local wine industry was devastating. Vineyards were abandoned, and wineries ceased production. Nevertheless, the first vinifera vines had been brought to this region, and they had succeeded. The Lenoir and the Herbemont, known by several other names from Carolina to Texas, spread westward as the French Blue and the French Brown respectively. When the South Carolina wine industry revived, during the middle decades of the 19th century, these grapes, often recaptured from long-untended vineyards, were the basis for renewed viticulture. They were joined by other varieties, including the Isabella. And the Scuppernongs continued to enjoy popularity. During the second half of the nineteenth century, winegrowing in the Southeast expanded spatially as well as quantitatively. Vineyards were planted in various mesoclimatic settings. Winegrowers' associations were established to promote local wines, to coordinate production, and to disseminate the results of technological research. Groundbreaking writings appeared, including a volume by De...