The Beginnings: 1600’s and 1700’s

Wild vines were found growing everywhere in the American East. Early 16th-century Italian explorer Giovanni Verrazzano observed, “[There are] many vines, growing naturally, which growing up, tooke hold of the trees as they doe in Lombardie, which if by husbandmen they were dressed in good order, without all doubt they would yield excellent wines,” (from Thomas Pinney’s A History of Wine in America). These vines were different species than the European grapevine, V. vinifera, and tended to produce grapes with higher acidity and lower sugar when ripe.

Early settlers made many attempts to plant their European vines, all of which failed. Conditions in America were quite different than in their homelands, and they were up against some formidable, albeit largely invisible, foes that would plague their attempts at winegrowing for centuries (to be discussed later).

In 1630 The Massachusetts Bay Colony began making wine from the native American grapes. These wines were used largely for sacramental purposes. A couple of years later Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop secured Conant's Island in Boston Harbor on the condition that he plant a vineyard there; rent was set at "a hogshead of the best wine that shall grow there to be paid yearly." This did not pan out, as he could not get a vineyard to grow. Rent was soon changed to two bushels of apples.

By 1665 New York and Pennsylvania were making heroic attempts at winegrowing. Charles Calvert’s vineyard in Pennsylvania was churning out wine "as good as the best burgundy." Unfortunately within a few years Calvert’s vines had all perished. According to early historian William Hubbard, "Many places do naturally abound with grapes, which gave great hopes of fruitful vineyards in after time: but as yet either skill is wanting to cultivate and order the roots of those wild vines, and reduce them to a pleasant sweetness, or time is not yet to be spared to look after the culture of such fruits as rather tend to the bene, or melius esse, of a place, than to the bare esse, and subsistence thereof."

Despite the marked difficulties experienced during this period, attempts at winegrowing continued. Nurseries such as the Prince Nursery Company of Long Island began growing and selling vines. The Sugar Act (which placed a duty on all incoming Portuguese wines including Madeira - a favorite of the colonies) increased the urgency of wine production. A close friend of Thomas Jefferson purportedly said, "we must then drink wine of our own making or none at all."

Books were published with instructions for using native grapes to make wine. Large vineyards such as Peter Legaux’s Spring Hill vineyards in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania were planted with native grapes, natural hybrids, and vinifera vines shipped in from Bordeaux. Legaux’s vineyards became the Pennsylvania Vine Company which, though its story did not have a favorable ending, was the source of vines for many other important early winegrowing operations.