Zinfandel: A History of a Grape and Its Wine

AMERICANS IN THE ENGLISH COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA GREW grapes from Florida to New England. In the early days of the republic, they took vines west to the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys. The growers were most successful when they raised grapes to eat. There were no great successes in the field of winemaking, although there were some admirable failures.

The grapes the Americans used fall into three categories: the native varieties found growing in North America, the European vinifera varieties transported to the New World, and the chance hybrids between the two. (In the nineteenth century American nurserymen began deliberately producing such hybrids.) ¹

In the more southerly climes, winegrowing demonstrated the most potential, thanks to the warmer climate and the heterogeneity of the population. But as one looks north along the eastern seaboard, one finds fewer and fewer persons who thought of viticulture in connection with wine production; such views were rare north of the middle colonies (later states). You could draw a line north of Long Island and west to the Hudson River Valley as a sort of geographer's limit of serious winegrowing.

Viticulture as a source of table grapes was another matter. Between 1810

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