Americans learned how to make wine successfully about two hundred years ago, after failing for more than two hundred years. Thomas Pinney takes an engaging approach to the history of American wine by telling its story through the lives of 13 people who played significant roles in building an industry that now extends to every state. While some names—such as Mondavi and Gallo—will be familiar, others are less well known. These include the wealthy Nicholas Longworth, who produced the first popular American wine; the German immigrant George Husmann, who championed the native Norton grape in Missouri and supplied rootstock to save French vineyards from phylloxera; Frank Schoonmaker, who championed the varietal concept over wines with misleading names; and Maynard Amerine, who helped make UC Davis a world-class winemaking school.

The Vikings called North America "Vinland," the land of wine. Giovanni de Verrazzano, the Italian explorer who first described the grapes of the New World, was sure that "they would yield excellent wines." And when the English settlers found grapes growing so thickly that they covered the ground down to the very seashore, they concluded that "in all the world the like abundance is not to be found." Thus, from the very beginning the promise of America was, in part, the alluring promise of wine. How that promise was repeatedly baffled, how its realization was gradually begun, and how at last it has been triumphantly fulfilled is the story told in this book. It is a story that touches on nearly every section of the United States and includes the whole range of American society from the founders to the latest immigrants. Germans in Pennsylvania, Swiss in Georgia, Minorcans in Florida, Italians in Arkansas, French in Kansas, Chinese in California—all contributed to the domestication of Bacchus in the New World. So too did innumerable individuals, institutions, and organizations. Prominent politicians, obscure farmers, eager amateurs, sober scientists: these and all the other kinds and conditions of American men and women figure in the story. The history of wine in America is, in many ways, the history of American origins and of American enterprise in microcosm. While much of that history has been lost to sight, especially after Prohibition, the recovery of the record has been the goal of many investigators over the years, and the results are here brought together for the first time. In print in its entirety for the first time, A History of Wine in America is the most comprehensive account of winemaking in the United States, from the Norse discovery of native grapes in 1001 A.D., through Prohibition, and up to the present expansion of winemaking in every state.

Tells the story of vitaculture and winemaking in America and discusses the individuals, organizations and institutions associated with the enterprise

In 1975 there were 125 wineries in eastern North America. By 2013 there were more than 2,400. How and why the eastern United States and Canada became a major wine region of the world is the subject of this history. Unlike winemakers in California with its Mediterranean climate, the pioneers who founded the industry after Prohibition—1933 in the United States and 1927 in Ontario—had to overcome natural obstacles such as subzero cold in winter and high humidity in the summer that favored diseases devastating to grapevines. Enologists and viticulturists at Eastern research stations began to find grapevine varieties that could survive in the East and make world-class wines. These pioneers were followed by an increasing number of dedicated growers and winemakers who fought in each of their states to get laws dating back to Prohibition changed so that an industry could begin.Hudson Cattell, a leading authority on the wines of the East, in this book presents a comprehensive history of the growth of the industry from Prohibition to today. He draws on extensive archival research and his more than thirty-five years as a wine journalist specializing in the grape and wine industry of the wines of eastern North America. The second section of the book adds detail to the history in the form of multiple appendixes that can be referred to time and again. Included here is information on the origin of grapes used for wine in the East, the crosses used in developing the French hybrids and other varieties, how the grapes were named, and the types of wines made in the East and when. Cattell also provides a state-by-state history of the earliest wineries that led the way.

Describes how Prohibition devastated the wine industry, the conditions of renewal after Repeal, the various New Deal measures that affected wine, and the early markets and methods. Goes on to examine the effects of World War II and how the troubled postwar years led to the great wine boom of the late 1960s, the spread of winegrowing in almost every state, and its continued expansion to the present day.