Thomas Jefferson and wine

While we learned this week about Robert Mondavi's transformative trip to Europe and its effect on his wine-making career, this chapter mirrors the pivotal trip that Founding Father Thomas Jefferson took to France in 1784.  

Prior to this trip, Jefferson shared the penchant of other Americans for stronger alcoholic beverages such as port and Madeira, drinks that were particularly popular in England as well.  As the United States broke from Britain, Jefferson made a parallel statement with his wine consumption, rejecting the stronger drinks and finding pleasure in the more refined and less alcoholic drinks of France and Italy.  Just as Mondavi was an emissary for fine wine in the United States towards the end of the twentieth century, Jefferson became a key proponent of wine for the post-revolutionary nation. (from monticello.org)  His experiences firsthand in Paris, Burgundy, and Bordeaux brought upon him a deep-seated enchantment with the finest French wines, and after returning to America he would order the best brands to be shipped all the way across the Atlantic to him.  (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95087999)  We have many letters existing which show just how extensive and knowledgeable his passion for wine was.  

Jefferson had two vineyards planted at Monticello.  He hoped to grow the European type vitis vinifera but in this technologically unrefined age it appears he struggled with this project, and so he experimented with New World grapes such as vitis labrusca and vitis rotundifolia.  We believe Jefferson never actually succeeded in making a Monticello wine, but his obsession with the project and passion for putting American roots to an agricultural enterprise he loved were evident even from his efforts.  Some 178 years later, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation used modern techniques to bring the European vines to his vineyards and make a few hundred bottles of the white wine that he had dreamed of.