Life, liberty, and the pursuit of fine red and white wine

 As America’s founding father of oenophiles (wine lovers), Thomas Jefferson’s famous wine collection has recently caused quite a stir. Early this century, the wine collector William Koch of the Forbes family sued German wine broker Hardy Rodenstock for selling him supposedly fake wine from Jefferson’s first growth Bordeaux collection. Such controversy, history, and intrigue has also spun rumors that Will Smith, among others, is working on a film called Jefferson Bottles which is based on the book, The Billionaire’s Vinegar.

However in terms of wine history, much more is owed to our third president and principal penner of the Declaration of Independence. Not only did Thomas Jefferson help free our country from England’s shackles, his lifelong passion for fine wine kept our original colonists’ pursuit of producing palatable wines alive. For even as far back as 1619, Virginia law stated that every man had to grow grapes.

While ambassador to France in the late 1700s, Jefferson visited Europe’s major wine growing regions and became even more enamored with his grape mistress. In Bordeaux and Burgundy he bought hundreds of bottles for his now famed collection from Montrachet, Meursault, Margaux, and several others.

With his background in farming and his love of wine, Jefferson made many observations in winemaking and wine preservation. He dreamed of growing the European vitis vinifera that he found in Europe at his Monticello estate in Virginia, but pests, disease, and the rugged New England climate kept him (as well as his predecessors) from succeeding.

However, the viticultral advances of the twentieth century have made the Jeffersonian dream a reality. Today, in the eastern United States, those same grape varietals that struggled to grow for him now produce great wines such as Merlot, Cabernet, Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay.

In the book, Thomas Jefferson on Wine, John Hailman aptly notes that Jefferson was the foremost wine expert of his era, thus leaving little doubt that his passion and painstaking experiments are among the roots of American viticulture.