American wine


has been produced in the United States since the 1500s, with the first widespread production beginning in New Mexico in 1628. As of 2023, wine production is undertaken in all fifty states, with California producing 80.8% of all US wine. The North American continent is home to several native species of grape, including Vitis labrusca, Vitis riparia, Vitis rotundifolia, and Vitis vulpina, but the wine-making industry is based almost entirely on the cultivation of the European Vitis vinifera, which was introduced by European settlers. With more than under vine, the United States is the fourth-largest wine producing country in the world, after Italy, Spain, and France.

History

The first Europeans to explore North America, a Viking expedition from Greenland, called it Vinland because of the profusion of grape vines they found. The earliest wine made in what is now the United States was produced between 1562 and 1564 by French Huguenot settlers from Scuppernong grapes at a settlement near Jacksonville, Florida. In the early American colonies of Virginia and the Carolinas, wine-making was an official goal laid out in the founding charters. However, settlers discovered that the wine made from the various native grapes had flavors which were unfamiliar and which they did not like.
This led to repeated efforts to grow the familiar European Vitis vinifera varieties, beginning with the Virginia Company exporting French vinifera vines with French vignerons to Virginia in 1619. These early plantings met with failure as native pest and vine disease ravaged the vineyards. In what would become the Southwestern United States the Spanish Kingdoms of Las Californias and Santa Fe de Nuevo México had missions that were planting vineyards, the traditions of which remain in the modern day California and New Mexico wine industries. New Mexico wine developed first in 1629 making it the oldest wine producing region in the United States, and Mission grapes were being grown for California wine by 1680. In 1683, William Penn planted a vineyard of French vinifera in Pennsylvania; it may have interbred with a native Vitis labrusca vine to create the hybrid grape Alexander. One of the first commercial wineries in the United States was founded in 1787 by Pierre Legaux in Pennsylvania. A settler in Indiana in 1806 produced wine made from the Alexander grape. Today, French-American hybrid grapes are the staples of wine production on the East Coast of the United States.
On November 21, 1799, the Kentucky General Assembly passed a bill to establish a commercial vineyard and winery. The vinedresser for the vineyard was John James Dufour, formerly of Vevey, Switzerland. The vineyard was located overlooking the Kentucky River in Jessamine County in what is known as Blue Grass country of central Kentucky. Dufour named it First Vineyard on November 5, 1798. The vineyard's current address in 5800 Sugar Creek Pike, Nicholasville, Kentucky. The first wine from First Vineyard was consumed by subscribers to the vineyard at John Postelthwaite's house on March 21, 1803. Two 5-gallon oak casks of wine were taken to President Thomas Jefferson in Washington, D. C., in February 1805. The vineyard continued until 1809, when a killing freeze in May destroyed the crop and many vines. The Dufour family abandoned Kentucky, and migrated west to Vevay, Indiana, a center of a Swiss-immigrant community.
In California, the first major vineyard and winery was established in 1769 by the Franciscan missionary Junípero Serra near San Diego. Later missionaries carried vines northward; Sonoma's first vineyard was planted around 1805. California has two native grape varieties, but they make very poor quality wine. The California Wild Grape does not produce wine-quality fruit, although it sometimes is used as rootstock for wine grape varieties. The missionaries used the Mission grape. Although a Vitis vinifera variety, it is a grape of "very modest" quality. Jean-Louis Vignes was one of the early settlers to use a higher quality vinifera in his vineyard near Los Angeles.
The first winery in the United States to become commercially successful was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the mid-1830s by Nicholas Longworth. He made a sparkling wine from Catawba grapes. By 1855, Ohio had 1500 acres in vineyards, according to travel writer Frederick Law Olmsted, who said it was more than in Missouri and Illinois, which each had 1100 acres in wine. German immigrants from the late 1840s had been instrumental in building the wine industry in those states.
In the 1860s, vineyards in the Ohio River Valley were attacked by black rot. This prompted several wine-makers to move north to the Finger Lakes region of western New York. During this time, the Missouri wine industry, centered on the German colony in Hermann, was expanding rapidly along both shores of the Missouri River west of St. Louis. By the end of the century, the state was second to California in wine production. In the late 19th century, the phylloxera epidemic in the West and Pierce's disease in the East ravaged the American wine industry.
Prohibition in the United States began when the state of Maine became the first state to go completely dry in 1846. Nationally, Prohibition was implemented after ratification by the states of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920, which forbade the manufacturing, sale and transport of alcohol. Exceptions were made for sacramental wine used for religious purposes, and some wineries were able to maintain minimal production under those auspices, but most vineyards ceased operations. New Mexico was one such region, due to the region's long history of wine making and religious traditions, monks and nuns in New Mexico were able to save long-standing New Mexican sacramental and leisure wine grape lineages. Other parts of the country resorted to bootlegging, home wine-making also became common, allowed through exemptions for sacramental wines and production for home use.
Following the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, operators tried to revive the American wine-making industry, which was nearly ended. Many talented wine-makers had died, vineyards had been neglected or replanted with table grapes, and Prohibition had changed Americans' taste in wines. During the Great Depression, consumers demanded cheap "jug wine" and sweet, fortified wine. Before Prohibition, dry table wines outsold sweet wines by three to one, but afterward, the ratio of demand changed dramatically. As a result, by 1935, 81% of California's production was sweet wines. For decades, wine production was low and limited.
Leading the way to new methods of wine production was research conducted at the University of California, Davis, and at some of the state universities in New York. Faculty at the universities published reports on which varieties of grapes grew best in which regions, held seminars on wine-making techniques, consulted with grape growers and wine-makers, offered academic degrees in viticulture, and promoted the production of quality wines. In the 1970s and 1980s, success by Californian wine-makers in the northern part of the state helped to secure foreign investment from other wine-making regions, most notably the Champenois of France. Wine-makers also cultivated vineyards in Oregon and Washington, on Long Island in New York, and numerous other new locales.
Americans became more educated about wines, and increased their demand for high-quality wine. All 50 states now have some acreage in vineyard cultivation. By 2004, 668 million gallons of wine were consumed in the United States. As of 2022, the U.S. produces over 752 million gallons of wine a year, of which California produces 81%, followed by New York, Washington, and Oregon. In the second decade of the 21st century, the US wine industry faces the growing challenges of competition from international exports and managing domestic regulations on interstate sales and shipment of wine.

Wine regions

There are nearly 3,000 commercial vineyards in the United States, and at least one winery in each of the 50 states.
  • West Coast – More than 90% of the total American wine production occurs in the states of California, Washington, and Oregon.
  • Southwestern United States – Notably New Mexico and Arizona
  • Rocky Mountain Region – Notably Idaho and Colorado
  • Southern United States – Notably Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama
  • Midwestern United States – Notably Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Missouri
  • Great Lakes region – Notably Michigan, New York, and Ohio
  • East Coast of the United States – Notably Maryland, eastern Long Island in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida

    Production by state

Production of wine per state in 2024 was as follows:
StateProduction Production
Alabama28,1350.004%
Alaska166,6670.027%
Arizona376,9110.058%
Arkansas146,1350.026%
California508,246,01578.469%
Colorado685,2830.105%
Connecticut155,9670.024%
Delaware15,9800.002%
Dist. of Columbia
Florida2,067,1770.319%
Georgia488,0170.079%
Hawaii19,7090.003%
Idaho522,6630.081%
Illinois2,022,7190.312%
Indiana2,621,1200.404%
Iowa186,0190.029%
Kansas83,7340.013%
Kentucky6,346,9560.979%
Louisiana38,0410.005%
Maine459,4960.071%
Maryland400,4620.062%
Massachusetts10,222,3821.518%
Michigan5,004,4940.773%
Minnesota604,1950.093%
Mississippi26,7080.004%
Missouri1,925,9340.297%
Montana279,7770.035%
Nebraska306,8080.047%
Nevada5,2700.001%
New Hampshire169,6330.026%
New Jersey2,515,8540.388%
New Mexico370,0360.057%
New York27,915,7844.412%
North Carolina2,361,9670.366%
North Dakota22,9890.002%
Ohio3,495,9050.540%
Oklahoma56,4930.008%
Oregon18,013,5312.781%
Pennsylvania44,297,3156.839%
Rhode Island73,0370.010%
South Carolina153,5240.020%
South Dakota35,3850.005%
Tennessee292,6120.045%
Texas2,169,0860.335%
Utah97,7070.005%
Vermont3,035,9820.468%
Virginia2,503,6250.386%
Washington32,373,9724.290%
West Virginia33,5190.004%
Wisconsin2,080,6290.276%
Wyoming26,4500.004%
Sum647,701,604100%