Early efforts at winemaking on the American East Coast: The Jamestown Settlement experiment

Prior to the Spanish monks planting their first vines in California (1769; then part of Alta California, a colonial property of Spain), the first experiment in winemaking by the English settlers on the east coast had already run its course. I provide some context in the following.

Explorerer/Settler Encounters with North American Wild Grapes

The east coast of North America was well-endowed with native wild grape vines if one is to believe the accounts of early explorers and settlers (However, unlike the indigenous inhabitants of Mexico, the peoples native to the eastern seaboard did not utilize these grapes in any kind of beverage.).

According to the Norse Sagas, Leif Erickson sailed from Greenland in 1021 to an unknown country to the west. Erickson named this land Vinland due to the profusion of berries (Recent study on artifacts recovered from an archaeological site at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland shows that Vikings occupied the site in 1021.).

Giovanni da Verrazzano was an Italian explorer who, while in the employ of King Francis I of France, charted the east coast of North America between the Carolinas and Newfoundland. In 1524 he encountered a region "so lovely" that he called it Arcadia and therein he found "many vines growing naturally, which growing up, took a hold of the trees as they doe in Lombardy ..."

Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer

Jacques Cartier, a French explorer also in the employ of Francis I, came across an island rich in grape vines and named it "Bacchus Iland."

The first reports of wine production on the east coast of North America is sourced to the pirate John Hawkins. During his 1565 trip to the New World, he provided food aid to a bedraggled group of Huguenots who had sought to establish a settlement at Fort Carolina at the mouth of Florida's St John's River. The settlement had run into difficulty. Hawkins claimed that despite all the troubles the Frenchmen had encountered, they still managed to make 20 hogsheads of wine. The French refuted this claim, indicating that any wine they had was from external sources. 

If this was not the first instance of wine production in the "US," it did birth such an event. Florida was, at that time, part of Spain's New World possessions so the Spaniards undertook an expedition to expel the French from their foothold at Fort Carolina. The expedition was successful and the Spanish established a settlement on nearby Elena Island (now Parris Island) to deter any future incursions. It is reported that the settlers had planted a vineyard by 1568 but it is not clear as to whether these were native vines or vitis vinifera.

In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh's first expedition landed on Hatarask Island in North Carolina and found "a carpet of of grapes growing down to the water's edge."

Both the Pilgrims in the north and the Jamestown Settlement in the south made note of the abundant native grape vines that they encountered.

Let us step back and take a look at some of the native grape species that the aforementioned explorers and settlers might have encountered.

Table 1. Selected native grape species that early explorers/settlers would have encountered.

Species	Description
Vitis labrusca	Labrusca or northern fox grape  Large berries that may come in black, white, or red Best-known of the native species Concord is a pure example of this species
Vitis rotundifolia	Round leaf grape Grows on bottom lands, river banks, and in swamps Commonly called Muscadine Scuppernong the best-known variety
Vitis riparia	Found in both the north and south Riverbank grape Small-berried and harsh-tasting
Vitis aestivalis	Summer grape Adequate sugar in its berries and free of the “foxy” odor of the labrusca
Vitis cordifolia	Winter grape Harshly herbaceous
Vitis rupestris	Sand grape Favors gravelly banks and dry water courses  Distributed through the region around southern Missouri and Illinois down into Texas

Source: Culled from Thomas Pinney's A History of Wine in America (UC Press, 1989)

Jamestown: The First Winemaking Experiment

The Jamestown Settlement, funded by the Virginia Company, was established in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 with 104 English men and boys. It was the first permanent English settlement in North America. The early settlers were "struck by the rich profusion of grapes" that adorned the surrounding woods. William Strachey, an English writer who served as Secretary and Recorder for the colony between 1610 and 1611, lauded the young wine made from these native grapes by Doctor Lawrence Bohun, "the first experimental scientist in Jamestown and one of its first physicians." While living in Virginia, Bohun produced wine and, as such, is the first named winemaker in the US.The quality of these wines, were less-than-stellar, however, as indicated by a request from the incoming Governor Lord De La Mar that one hogshead of the wine, "sour as it is," be sent to England as a sample.

King James of England saw the production of silk and wine in the colony as a source of wealth that would place England on an equal status footing with its European rivals Spain and France. The Virginia Company also needed profits to pay returns to its shareholders. These were two of the catalysts to a Virginia 1619 law requiring each householder to annually plant and maintain 10 vines. The settlers were to be aided in this effort by eight skilled French vignerons who had been sent to the colony along with vine plants. The latter is significant because it is the first recorded instance of vitis vinifera on the eastern seaboard. Further, the settlers were provided with a winemaking manual that was prepared by the King's Master of Silkworms and Wine, a Frenchman named John Boneil.

All in all, this initial effort at creating a Virginia wine industry was unsuccessful. A little wine was made from native grapes and sent to London in 1622 but was not well received. This first experiment in winemaking ran aground on a number of rocks:

• Tobacco grew very well in Virginia and there was growing demand for the crop in Europe. Given the choice of planing vines which made unsatisfactory wine and the cash crop tobacco, the settlers voted with their pocket books every time.
• The native wild grapes were unsuitable for the production of wine
• The settlers blamed the vignerons for the lack of progress but a number had been killed and others wanted to cash in on growing tobacco rather than the unsatisfactory grape vines. The settlers were so upset with the vignerons that they sought to bar them from growing tobacco.
• There were significant impediments to growing vitis vinifera in Virginia (Pinney):
• The area experienced climate extremes, with the vines alternately blasted and frozen
• Summer humidity steamed the vines and presented a hospitable environment for fungal diseases such as powdery and downy mildew and black rot (These diseases were unknown in Europe prior to the mid-1800s)
• Destructive insect pests such as the grape leaf hopper and grape berry moth.

According to Pinney, "... the failure to make anything out of wine-growing in the face of a prosperous tobacco industry soon led men to give up a losing game." The boomtown mentality of Jamestown was "ill-suited to the patient labor and modest expectations of wine-growing."

But this would not be the last word on winemaking in Virginia; or on the American east coast.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme