The Origins of the American Wine Industry

The winemaking industry has a very long history in the United States and though California is the state which produces the most wine in the United States, the art of winemaking didn’t start there. Europeans which first came to North America found a lot of grapes vines growing throughout the country but they found the quality from these grapes and their resulting wines unsatisfactory. In order to sort this problem out they came along with cuttings and planted other grape varieties which would give them the wine that they desired. Records have shown that in 1629 a small town in New Mexico started the planting of different varieties of grapes.

It was by the year 1802 which other grapes which were planted all over the United States and in which winemaking became a very fruitful business. In the state of Ohio, the Catawba grape was the leading version of grape being grown. A certain winemaker planted a great crop of grapes of more than one thousand acres which birthed some very great wine. The bad thing was that a fungus affected the crop of grapes and cleared out the entire crop and this resulted in the end of the winemakers business.

Another land was sought where grapes would be safe from mildew as well as funguses. It was in the 1860s that an area in New York which was called Finger Lakes was then found. Grape varieties which had been carefully sought out where then transplanted to this region and they succeeded in growing successfully. A new brand of wine resulted and it was so popular that the wines from Finger Lakes even won prizes in places as far off as Europe.

The vineyards in California on the other hand, were planted in the year 1769 by missionaries. They started to make wine that was considered as very excellent wine as at the period in question. In California, the first layman to make wine started his efforts with cuttings which had been imported from France. By the middle of the 1850s this huge vineyard had more than forty thousand grapevines growing fruit and a winery which churned out at least a thousand barrels of wine on an annual basis.

From this period onwards, California turned into the winemaking capital of the United States. Because of the wonderful climate, a number of other wineries started in the state and all over the country. One of these wineries made use of a technique which was known as dry farming.

Though most vineyards used to irrigate their grapes in order to ensure that their grapes got enough water, another person who had at least five hundred acres of grapes allowed them to grow on hills and slopes and allowed nature to do the rest. A lot of people followed this mans methods and today it is one of the predominant methods of growing grapes.

The industry in California got a better boost in the year 1861 when the federal government sent a particular winemaker to Europe in order to return with as many good cuttings as possible. The winemaking industry was growing into a very large one and the government was trying to ensure that it was supported and encouraged. This individual came back with almost a hundred thousand vines representing about three hundred varieties of grape.

These vines were then shared among growers and became what is now the healthy wine industry which makes a large part of the wine industry in America.

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