Through the Grapevine
Design by Alex Povis. Paper illustration by Yulia Brodskaya.
Thomas Jefferson was not used to failing. He wrote the Declaration of Independence, of course; was ambassador to France during the Revolutionary War; was America’s first secretary of state and its third president. He ran a successful plantation – albeit one dependent on slave labor – and designed hideaway beds, dumbwaiters, sundials and plows. But after more than 50 years of trying, he couldn’t master American wine grapes.
Jefferson began his foray into grape growing as early as 1772; the next year, an Italian winemaker – among many other things, not unlike Jefferson – named Philip Mazzei established a vineyard next to Monticello. Jefferson had full faith in him: When Mazzei brought in Tuscan winemakers, Jefferson hired them, too. Thirty vines were planted at Monticello, with cuttings from France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, as well as native American vines. A month later, frost killed them all.
Despite this early failure, Mazzei was able to establish the Virginia Wine Co. (he counted Jefferson and George Washington as shareholders). But after only three years, the revolution hit Virginia. Jefferson later claimed the vineyards were hopelessly trampled by a German general’s horses. In any case, Mazzei abandoned Virginia for Europe in 1785.
Over the ensuing decades, Jefferson tried just about anything to establish a thriving vineyard at Monticello. He planted European grapevine cuttings – Vitis vinifera – as well as native vines like Scuppernong, even after he was elected president. He brought vines back home from the White House grounds. Jefferson had faith that the Americas could produce a wine to rival anything in Europe; he just couldn’t find the right grape.
On March 22, 1824 – two years before Jefferson’s death – vine cuttings from a Dr. Daniel Norborne Norton arrived in Richmond, Virginia, at the offices of Jefferson’s agent, Bernard Peyton. They were addressed to Jefferson’s grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, who was overseeing Monticello.
“By a waggon [sic] a few days prior [I] sent you a Box of Grape cuttings, sent to my counting house, by Dr. Norton of this City, without directions,” Peyton wrote Jefferson. “He tells me they were intended for Jefferson Randolph. Please acquaint him with it.” Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that Randolph planted the cuttings, nor what the grapes were; he certainly didn’t share his grandfather’s passion for viticulture. Norton never heard back from Jefferson, and the former president died on July 4, 1826, without ever having produced one bottle of wine after five decades of grape growing.
“It’s a very vexing grape,” says Doug Frost, Kansas City-based author, master sommelier, American Master of Wine and Missouri Wine Competition judge. He’s referring to Norton’s Virginia Seedling, now called the Norton grape. There’s no way to know if that’s what Norton sent to Thomas Jefferson in 1824, but it's the doctor's greatest legacy.