WINES & SUCH: Thomas Jefferson a winemaker, connoisseur?

Gentle readers who have had the good fortune to visit the memorial at Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota doubtless recall the giant five-story images carved from solid rock — four of our greatest presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the third president, is remembered as the author of the Declaration of Independence and the architect of the Louisiana Purchase. He was a statesman, diplomat, writer, scholar, inventor, musician, lawmaker, and the list goes on.

He is also without question America’s first wine activist and connoisseur, a feature in a time when wine on these shores was almost non-existent, as mysterious as the new nation itself.

What was wine like in Jefferson’s day? Remember, this was an age not long after the invention of corks as bona fide bottle stoppers. Previously, wines had been shipped in wooden barrels, exposing the liquid to all kinds of nasty little bugs likely to turn good fermented grape juice into bitter vinegar.

Jefferson was likely a three-fold wine enthusiast. The first was the landed gentleman farmer who drank imported Madeira, a fortified sherry-like wine, at the local tavern.

The second was the newly arrived, naïve American in Paris*, who experiences for the first time the urbanity of European society, from the boudoirs of courtesans to the political machinations of men, along with the incredibly appealing “new” wines of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne and other areas of France heretofore unexplored and untried.

Some of his contemporaries say the third Jefferson may have been the wealthy traveler back from the Old World of sophistication and charm, flaunting a rich cellar of French labels. But Jefferson was not a wine snob. Rather he was a true connoisseur who appreciated the subtleties of traditional winemakers who had been at the trade for centuries. He was, in fact, in all he accomplished a seeker of wisdom.

Jefferson’s travels in Europe took him through the vineyards of Burgundy, Italy, Bordeaux, the Loire Valley, as well as Germany and Champagne. There is no doubt he tried the local wines everywhere he went and increased his world view by leaps and bounds over the rest of his countrymen. The only notable exception is Ben Franklin who as early as 1778 — long before Jefferson went to Europe — had a cellar holding more than a thousand bottles.

In wine, he found great pleasure. My favorite Jefferson quotation reads: “No nation is drunken where wine is cheap, and none more sober when the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage.”

But with all his accomplishments and brilliance and despite his expertise at gardening, his absolute favorite hobby, he was unsuccessful as a farmer. He never made a nickel from any of his plantations. Nor did he ever succeed in making a drop of homemade wine because he never managed to grow enough grapes. We don’t know why he did not succeed, certainly because of wine diseases, or from weather (frost), or simply from a lack of knowledge regarding vineyard cultivation.

Jefferson failed not only to develop grapes from imported European varieties, but also from native grapes, presumably the Muscadine family. He was even unsuccessful with the ubiquitous Scuppernong.

Jefferson spent 50 years trying to make wine in Virginia, and in his final years he wrote: “…  on the culture of the vine it would presumption in me to give any opinion, because it is a culture of which I have no knowledge either from practice or of reading.”

The great man it appears had just given up; which is a shame because today Monticello Vineyards, his beautiful home, have been restored and are producing limited quantities of excellent Vinifera based grapes. The state of Virginia itself is awash with wine today, with more than 70 bonded wineries going strong.

This achievement demonstrates how Jefferson’s dream of a Virginia wine industry was not misguided, only that in this area, as with so many others, he was a man ahead of his time.

(*For this observation and for much of the information for this article, I am indebted to John Hailman, and his definitive work, “Th. Jefferson on Wine.”)

Oak Ridge resident Ron Drinkhouse was a buyer and seller of wines in his native Connecticut. He welcomes inquiries, and can be reached via email at ronoct9@aol.com or via telephone at 352-445-0328.