In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

American Wine. January 18, 1828 Nicholas Herbemont’s donation of three bottles of wine to John S. Skinner inaugurated a growing engagement between him and the circle of Maryland and northern Virginian planters. In 1828, when Skinner handed the editorship of the American Farmer to Gideon B. Smith, one of the Maryland group most interested in wine, the relationship would grow even stronger. The cover letter for the gift of wine reveals one of the great difficulties facing even the most experienced and well-schooled oenologists in America, the fog of misinformation about grape origins. Hybrid grape varieties, such as Herbemont’s Madeira and the Isabella, differed sufficiently from pure native grapes, such as the “Arena” (Vitis aestivalis), that they were often presumed to be of foreign derivation. Often lore was created to supply a foreign nativity to these varieties. William Prince, the finest grape botanist in the United States in the 1820s, collected such lore assiduously. His claim that the Isabella was collected in the wild outside of Charleston seemed implausible to Herbemont, who here offered his own suggestions. His request that agriculturist George Gibbs, whose wife introduced the variety to New York, supply an explanation resulted in the confirmation of Prince’s story. Published in American Farmer 9, no. 51 (March 7, 1828). Columbia, S.C. Jan. 18, 1828 J. S. Skinner, Esq. Dear Sir,—I have been for a long time but a sorry correspondent of yours, or rather no correspondent at all. It is not, I assure you from a diminution of my great regard for you and your most useful labours; but from causes which I could not perhaps account for satisfactorily. To make some little amend, however, this is to inform you, that I have just put in a box, directed to Mr. George Fitzhugh, Jr. three bottles of my wine, made last August.1 Two of them are of the Madeira grape,2 (so 1. Virginian George Fitzhugh Jr. (1806–1881) was a singularly curious individual. One of the first American sociologists, an ardent champion of slavery as an economic and moral system, and bibliophile , he lived a semirecluse in his estate on the northern neck, operating more in the republic of letters than the society of his peers. 2. The “Herbemont” grape. published letters 142 called here,) the other of a native grape commonly called here the summer grape. Finding it very good and deserving a name, I called it “Arena.” This vine grows abundantly in our sand hills. The Arena requires at least one year before it can be properly judged of, as before this, it has a wild unpleasant taste, which changes so much as to become (though an uncommon) a very pleasant, strong bodied, highly flavoured wine. I beg therefore you will husband it so as to keep some till it has attained the age of at least one year. You may easily do this by filling a smaller bottle,3 after it has settled so as to be perfectly clear, cork it well, and keep it on its side in a cellar, till you think proper to pass sentence upon it. The other which I call “Palmyra,” from the name of my place,4 is now fit to drink though it does improve also by age. I believe the Arena will be found the best grape for wine among the natives. It also improves much by cultivation, in point of size, juiceness and other valuable qualities. It is only a small grape; but the vine bears abundantly, never rots and never fails, that I have ever noticed. The native grapes are, however, much more difficult of cultivation than the old cultivated ones. Cultivation, however, corrects somewhat of its uncivilized qualities. The greatest difficulty is in propagating it by cuttings, which will so seldom take root, that not more than three or four will grow out of perhaps fifty;5 but cultivation improves considerably this unsocial temper. I see Mr. Prince has a dispute on his hands relative to the birth place of his favourite the Isabella grape, and seems determined to prove it a native of this state.6 All the inquiries and researches that I have made on this subject have proved fruitless , and it is certainly not known as a native in Dorchester,7 although it is very common all over this country; but no one seems to know where it came from. It certainly bears strong marks of some of our natives, particularly that called...

Share