A History of Wine in America from the Beginnings to Prohibition: From the Beginnings to Prohibition

Copertina anteriore
University of California Press, 1 gen 1989 - 553 pagine
The Vikings called North America "Vinland," the land of wine. Giovanni de Verrazzano, the Italian explorer who first described the grapes of the New World, was sure that "they would yield excellent wines." And when the English settlers found grapes growing so thickly that they covered the ground down to the very seashore, they concluded that "in all the world the like abundance is not to be found." Thus, from the very beginning the promise of America was, in part, the alluring promise of wine. How that promise was repeatedly baffled, how its realization was gradually begun, and how at last it has been triumphantly fulfilled is the story told in this book.
It is a story that touches on nearly every section of the United States and includes the whole range of American society from the founders to the latest immigrants. Germans in Pennsylvania, Swiss in Georgia, Minorcans in Florida, Italians in Arkansas, French in Kansas, Chinese in California--all contributed to the domestication of Bacchus in the New World. So too did innumerable individuals, institutions, and organizations. Prominent politicians, obscure farmers, eager amateurs, sober scientists: these and all the other kinds and conditions of American men and women figure in the story. The history of wine in America is, in many ways, the history of American origins and of American enterprise in microcosm.
While much of that history has been lost to sight, especially after Prohibition, the recovery of the record has been the goal of many investigators over the years, and the results are here brought together for the first time. The Vikings called North America "Vinland," the land of wine. Giovanni de Verrazzano, the Italian explorer who first described the grapes of the New World, was sure that "they would yield excellent wines." And when the English settlers found grapes growing so thickly that they covered the ground down to the very seashore, they concluded that "in all the world the like abundance is not to be found." Thus, from the very beginning the promise of America was, in part, the alluring promise of wine. How that promise was repeatedly baffled, how its realization was gradually begun, and how at last it has been triumphantly fulfilled is the story told in this book.
It is a story that touches on nearly every section of the United States and includes the whole range of American society from the founders to the latest immigrants. Germans in Pennsylvania, Swiss in Georgia, Minorcans in Florida, Italians in Arkansas, French in Kansas, Chinese in California--all contributed to the domestication of Bacchus in the New World. So too did innumerable individuals, institutions, and organizations. Prominent politicians, obscure farmers, eager amateurs, sober scientists: these and all the other kinds and conditions of American men and women figure in the story. The history of wine in America is, in many ways, the history of American origins and of American enterprise in microcosm.
While much of that history has been lost to sight, especially after Prohibition, the recovery of the record has been the goal of many investigators over the years, and the results are here brought together for the first time.
 

Sommario

2
40
VIRGINIA AND THE SOUTH IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
55
4
77
OTHER COLONIES AND COMMUNITIES BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
83
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE BEGINNINGS OF A NATIVE INDUSTRY
107
6
130
7
156
8
191
THE FATE OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
285
12
296
CALIFORNIA TO THE END OF THE CENTURY
310
13
341
THE INDUSTRY ACROSS THE NATION
371
15
404
16
425
Fox Grapes and Foxiness
443

EASTERN VITICULTURE COMES OF AGE
203
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CALIFORNIA
231
10
264
Works Cited
505
Index
525
Copyright

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Informazioni sull'autore (1989)

Thomas Pinney is William M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and Chairman of the Department of English at Pomona College. He has published scholarly work on George Eliot, Lord Macaulay, and Rudyard Kipling. A History of Wine in America is the outcome of his long-standing interest in American wines dating back to his graduate school days.

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