USA

On Friday, the 12th of October 1492, at 2 a.m. the ship „Pinta” sighted land. This was the island of Guanahani, part of the Bahamas (this was the name at the time in the local language, it bears this name again today), it was named San Salvador by Christopher Columbus (1451-1506). This is still regarded as the date on which America resp. the New World was discovered. However, 500 years before Columbus, another explorer had set foot on the American continent. In around 1000 AD, the Icelandic Viking Leif Eriksson – later to be known as „the Lucky” (son of Erik the Red, who discovered Greenland) sailed south from Greenland, and reached the American coast. He named the area „Vinland”. Many attempts have been made to identify the exact spot at which the Vikings landed, one version claims it is the island of Manhattan, in present-day New York. The American historian Frederick J. Pohl, who researched the matter for a long time, claims in his book „The lost discovery” that the spot is a little further north, in the Bay of Massachusetts, where Boston is today. According to a written report, the Grenlinga Saga (saga of the Greenlanders) - Leif Eriksson found gentle rolling hills there, plentiful game, salmon, wild wheat and in the forests masses of vines with very large grapes hanging from the trees. A member of the crew picked some berries and left them lying around until they fermented, he was found in a drunken state. Whether the name Vinland really translates as Wineland is uncertain, it could also have meant „meadow” or „pasture”. Thorfinn Karlsefni, Leifs brother-in-law, tried to establish a settlement, but this had to be abandoned after a few years due to the staunch resistance by the local tribes, who must have been similar to either Eskimos or American Indians.

When the first colonists from England landed on the east coast of America towards theend of the 16th century, they made the same discovery Eriksson had made. They found a profusion of vines in the forests, bearing huge grapes. However, in spite of many attempts, it proved nigh impossible to produce a tasty, pleasant wine from these wild vines. This is because numerous American vines, especially those of the vitis labrusca species, produce a wine with a rather unpleasant, sharp strawberry taste, also referred to as a foxy note. As a result, many experiments were soon underway along the entire Atlantic coast from Massachusetts in the north to Florida in the deep south with grape varieties imported from Europe. However, these generally died very soon, for a number of reasons. For one thing, the American soil was literally teeming with phylloxera, and in addition mildew, which was unknown in Europe, as well as extreme climatic conditions with both heat and cold, and other diseases proved a challenge to the vines. The American vines had had millions of years in which to adapt to their environmental conditions, and had developed appropriate resistance, but the European vines were defenseless against the onslaught. There were numerous unsuccessful attempts to solve the problems. For more than 200 years, farmers did not recognise the causes, it was only after both phylloxera and mildew had been introduced to Europe that these diseases were successfully combated in the last third of the 19th century.

George Washington (1732–1799) and Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), both later to be elected presidents of the USA, were great supporters of wine culture. Jefferson was convinced that only a sufficient quantity of wine available, together with an appropriate culture of enjoying wine, would prevent Americans from drinking stronger alcoholic beverages, such as whisky. This was supported by a law enacted in 1791, which placed an excise tax on all alcoholic beverages, excluding only wine produced in America. Jefferson also engaged in experiments with European and American vines over a period of decades at his wine estate, Monticello in Virginia. However, his dream of turning the United States into a leading wine-producing nation was not to be fulfilled in his lifetime. As of the beginning of the 19th century, and born out of necessity, attempts were made to come to grips with the characteristics of American vine varieties. Hybrids were bred all over the country, and attempts were also made to produce wine from the existing American varieties. French Huguenots had already established vineyards in the vicinity of Jacksonville in Florida in 1562. They cultivated a wild ancestor of the white grape variety Scuppermong, which is still planted today, this was gradually cultivated, and wine produced from it. In 1843, Ephraim Wales Bull (1806-1895) planted seeds of a wild grape variety of the species vitis labrusca close to the town of Concord in the federal state of Massachusetts, selected a red variety and named it after the town. This variety too is still fairly widely planted today, particularly in the northeast.

An immigrant Swiss wine producer by the name of Jean Jacques Dufour (1763 – 1827) established a vineyard using the historical Alexander grape variety, among others, in Jessamine County in Kentucky in 1798. This estate is considered to be the first commercially run winery in America. He later moved to Indiana, and established a wine estate on the Ohio River – a book on wine that he wrote helped to build his reputation as one of the most important pioneers in American viticulture. The land surveyor John Adlum (1759-1836), who in 1820 planted large quantities of a variety from North Carolina in Georgetown in the young federal state of Ohio, experienced considerable success with wine. He initially called the variety Tokay, and later changed the name to Catawba, which is a river in North Carolina. In 1823 he sent a bottle of wine made from this variety to Thomas Jefferson. The second birthplace of commercial wine production in North America is seen in Cincinnati in Ohio, where in 1823 the lawyer Nicholas Longworth initially tried unsuccessfully to plant European varieties along the banks of the Ohio River. Then, in 1825, he received some Catawba plants from Adlum, and used these to produce the first sparkling wine in America, called „Sparkling Catawba”. Part of the success of this wine can be attributed to the fact that the foxy note of the variety is less evident in a sparkling wine. At the time, the Ohio river was known as the „American Rhine”, the sparkling wine became famous quite quickly, and Longworth became a wealthy man. The American Civil War (1861-1865), vine diseases and Longworth’s death eventually put a stop to these initial successes. At least the foundation had been laid.

However, the golden age of wine on a large scale only got under way in California, here, the Franciscan monk Junipero Serra (1713 – 1784) had planted the first vineyards in 1769, when the „San Diego” mission was established. He planted the European Mission grape variety, the first successful planting of vitis vinifera in America. A decisive impulse for the predominant position of California in the USA came from Austro-Hungarian Agoston Haraszthy (1812-1869) in the 1860’s, when he imported tens of thousands of young vines from Europe. However, Prohibition (1920 to 1933) resulted in a total demise of the wine culture. Numerous wineries went out of business, many vineyards were uprooted, and the infrastructure as well as the knowledge and experience of the industry were largely lost. It took a full generation for America to slowly recover from this. Beginning in 1939, wine-growing pioneer and author Philip Wagner#Wagner Philip (1904-1996) initiated a new direction in American viticulture from his Boordy Vineyards estate in Maryland. He imported a large quantity of French hybrids and rootstocks from France (of Baco, Seibel and Seyve-Villard), which were then spread all over the east coast of the United States. In the mid-20th century, American viticulture made a new start in California. Of the roughly 2.200 wine-producing units in the USA, some 1.100 are located in California, which produces in excess of 90% of the total volume of wine. However, other federal states such as Oregon and Washington State are experiencing rapid growth.

Wine is produced in all 50 federal states of the USA, including Alaska (where, however, there are no vineyards) and on Hawaii. The last state to plant vines was North Dakota, which has had 2 wineries since 2002. However, their extent varies a great deal – basically there are more vineyards in the west than in the east, and more in the north than in the south. Wine is still widely regarded as a luxury product in the USA, rather than as an everyday commodity. Wines are more expensive than they generally are in Europe. An after-effect of the Prohibition era is that wine, as an alcoholic beverage, is still considered to be a dangerous drug in many federal states. The three-tier system was introduced following Prohibition. This prescribes that alcoholic beverages must be distributed via the producer, wholesaler and retailer, all of which must be completely separate and independent of each other. In 1983 the BATF authority (now the TTB) declared the AVA (American Viticultural Area) appellation system as being applicable in all states. The status in early 2007 is that there are 189 AVA regions in total, of which 107 are in California. The total vineyard area is 398.000 hectares (around half used for table grapes), producing around 20 million hectolitres of wine annually (status 2004). The five most successful US wine brands are described using the acronym GAMIT (Gallo, Mondavi, etc.)bezeichnet. In many federal states, large quantities of fruit-based wines (apples, berries, etc.), table grapes, grape juice and grape jelly are also produced.
A total of 40 federal states are also listed under separate entries: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kalifornien, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana#Montana (USA), New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.