Word: vinifera
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That is quite an achievement, considering the troubles that the immigrant Vitis vinifera* has had surviving in North America. The European vine did not fare well in chilly Northeastern climes. In fact, making a potable domestic wine was quite possibly the only undertaking in which Thomas Jefferson ever admitted defeat. The most grievous blow of all was the Prohibition era, in which the wine industry died on the vine. It has not been helped since by many Americans' two-fisted addiction to beer and hard liquor or aversion to alcohol in any form (dry and blue laws...
Wiederkehr was named for Johann Wiederkehr, who settled in Altus, Ark., in the 1880s because the Ozark Mountain country reminded him of his native Switzerland. Johann planted native Concords and Delawares, but in 1958 his grandson Alcuin, now 43, began experimenting with vinifera and last year sold 10,000 gal. of such wines as Cabernet Sauvignon and Gewurztraminer, some of them in his own Alpine-style restaurant...
Tabor Hill was founded in 1968 in Buchanan, Mich., by Leonard Olson, then a 26-year-old steel salesman. "When we started with our vinifera, the local farmers said we were full of prunes, that it wouldn't work." Yet a 1971 Tabor Hill Vidal blanc was served in the White House by Michigander Gerald R. Ford. Though Olson and his partners are still struggling financially, they have visions of a mini-Napa Valley on the shores of Lake Michigan...
Meredyth, near Middleburg, Va., has been growing hybrids only since 1975 and already produces 85,000 bottles a year. Says Owner Archie Smith: "We're selling almost as quickly as we can get it out." Nearby Piedmont is the state's first commercial vinifera winery, and expects to double its capacity over the next two years. Both Meredyth and Piedmont used to be cattle farms. Says Piedmont's manager, Jim Cockrell, 35, who over the past four years oversaw the transition from cattle farm to vineyard: "It sure beats milking cows twice...
Benmarl, a Hudson Valley vineyard, was first planted in the mid-1800s and replanted in the '60s. Its new vintner, who grows both hybrids and vinifera, is Mark Miller, 58, a former magazine illustrator. He has successfully financed his operation by forming a Société des Vignerons, a group of people who for an initial fee as high as $500, plus up to $50 a year, buy "vine-rights"-two vines-and are entitled to twelve bottles of Benmarl wine annually The 900 members of the société also get first choice on all other...