Wine history - Sparkling wines of the United States
From the earliest period of the colonisation of America the vine appears to have attracted the attention of the settlers, and it is said that as early as 1564 wine was made from the native grape in Florida.
The first attempts to establish a regular vineyard date, however, from 1620, and would seem to have been made in Virginia with European vines, the prospects having become sufficiently encouraging in 1630 for the colonists to send for French vine-dressers to tend their plants.
The latter were subsequently accused of ruining the vines by their bad treatment, but most likely this was an error, it having since been made evident that European vines cannot be successfully cultivated east of the Rocky Mountains, where the phylloxera vastatrix prevails.
It was in vain that William Penn made repeated attempts to acclimatise European vines in Pennsylvania, that the Swiss emigrants—vine-growers from the Lake of Geneva—made similar trials, they having expended ten thousand dollars to no purpose.
In vain, in Jessamine county, Kentucky, Pierre Legaud laboured in the environs of Philadelphia, and Lakanal, the member of the French Convention, experimented in Tennessee, Ohio, and Alabama; all their efforts to introduce the Old World vines proved futile. The attempts that were made by Swiss settlers at Vevay, in Indiana, with the indigenous plants were more successful, and after a time they managed to produce some palatable wine from the Schuylkill muscatel.
Towards the latter part of the 18th century the Mission Fathers had succeeded in planting vineyards in California. It is known that in 1771 the vine was cultivated there, and the San Gabriel Mission in the county of Los Angeles, some 300 miles S.E. of San Francisco, is said to have possessed the first vineyard.
A prevalent belief is, that the vines were from roots or cuttings obtained from either Spain or Mexico, but it is also conjectured that they were some of the wild varieties known to be scattered over the country, while a third theory suggests that as attempts to make wine from the wild grapes would most likely have proved a failure, the Fathers planted the seeds of raisins which had come from Spain.
The culture must have progressed rapidly, if, as stated, there were planted at San Gabriel in a 205single spring no fewer than 40,000 vines.
These mission vines were mainly of two sorts, the one yielding a white grape with a musky flavour, and the other a dark blue fruit. The latter was the favourite, doubtless from its produce bearing some resemblance to the red wines of Old Castile.
From San Gabriel the planting of the vine extended from mission to mission until each owned its patch of vineland. At the time of the arrival of the Americans in 1846 the smallest of these was five acres in extent, and others as many as thirty acres, and it is calculated the average yield was from 700 to 1,000 gallons of wine per acre. This was owing first to the exceeding richness of the soil, and secondly to its being well irrigated. If the celebrated mission vine grown on one of the sunny slopes overlooking the lovely Montecito valley near Santa Barbara on the blue Pacific had many fellows in the Fathers’ vineyards, the above estimate can hardly be an exaggerated one. The stem of this vine, which is four feet four inches in circumference at the ground, rises eight feet before branching out. The branches, under which the country people are fond of dancing, and which are supported by fifty-two trellises, extend over more than 5,000 square feet. This monster vine produces annually from five to six tons of grapes, and one year it yielded no fewer than 7,000 bunches, each from one to four pounds in weight. It is irrigated by water from the hot springs, situated a few miles distant, and is believed to be from half to three-quarters of a century old.
Viticulture and vinification languished in the United States until attention was called in 1826 to the catawba vine by Major Adlum, of Georgetown, near Washington, who thought that by so doing he was conferring a greater benefit on his country than if he had liquidated its national debt. This vine, which is derived from the wild Vitis labrusca, was first planted on an extensive scale by Nicholas Longworth, justly looked upon as one of the founders of American viticulture, and gradually supplanted all others, remaining for many years the principal plant cultivated along the banks of the Ohio—the so-called 206“Rhine of America”—until, ceaselessly attacked by rot, mildew, and leaf-blight, it was found necessary in many places to supplant it by more robust varieties.
Mr. Longworth, about the year 1837, among his numerous experiments at Cincinnati, included that of making sparkling wines from the catawba, isabella, and other varieties of grapes, and to-day there are several manufactories of sparkling catawba and other wines in the capital of Ohio—the self-named “Queen city,” which its detractors have jocularly dubbed Porcopolis on account of the immense trade done there in smoked and salted pork. The chief sparkling wine establishments at Cincinnati are those of Messrs. Werk and Sons, whose sparkling catawba obtained a medal for progress at the Vienna Exhibition in 1873, and who have, moreover, largely experimented with ives’ and virginia seedlings, delaware and other grapes, in making effervescent wines, though only with doubtful success. Another Cincinnati firm is that of Messrs. George Bogen and Co., whose sparkling wines also met with recognition at Vienna.