Ohio Vintage Getting Better

Filed in archive Wineries on May 10, 2006

Okay, so pretty much anywhere there is dirt you can stick a vine in it and try to grow some grapes, but you never know if it will work or not.

I am still sometimes surprised when I learn about wineries that have been around forever, especially in the U.S. and I'm not talking about California. In many ways, they are their own country (wink).

From Ohio's wine trails improving with age:

Southwest Ohio is the birthplace of Ohio winemaking, dating to the early 1800s, when Cincinnatian Nicholas Longworth began importing vines from Europe and planting them on hillsides overlooking the Ohio River. By the 1850s, he had 3,000 acres producing 157,000 gallons of Catawba wine a year.

Growers in other parts of the state followed suit and built a significant wine industry. By 1860, Ohio led the nation in wine production.

But with the Civil War draining the manpower pool and diseases attacking the vines, the industry Dried up, re-emerging at different times in different parts of the state. Winemaking in the northern part of the state recovered first, with vineyards sprouting up on the shore and islands of Lake Erie.

The industry didn't return to Southwest Ohio until the early 1960s, when researchers at Ohio State demonstrated that certain French-American hybrid grapes could not only survive but thrive.

Today, the industry's thriving and the wine is improving, Winchell said. "Ohio vines are getting older, and that means better wine, because the longer the vines are in the ground, the better the wine."