The first Europeans to explore North America, a Viking expedition from Greenland, called it
Vinland because of the profusion of grape vines they found. The earliest wine made in what is now the United States was produced between 1562 and 1564 by
French Huguenot settlers from
Scuppernong grapes at a settlement near
Jacksonville, Florida. and
Mission grapes were being grown for
California wine by 1680. In 1683,
William Penn planted a vineyard of French vinifera in
Pennsylvania; it may have interbred with a native
Vitis labrusca vine to create the
hybrid grape Alexander. One of the first commercial wineries in the United States was founded in 1787 by Pierre Legaux in Pennsylvania. A settler in
Indiana in 1806 produced wine made from the Alexander grape. Today, French-American hybrid grapes are the staples of wine production on the
East Coast of the United States. The vinedresser for the vineyard was John James Dufour, formerly of
Vevey, Switzerland. The vineyard's current address in 5800 Sugar Creek Pike,
Nicholasville, Kentucky. The first wine from First Vineyard was consumed by subscribers to the vineyard at John Postelthwaite's house on March 21, 1803. Two 5-gallon oak casks of wine were taken to President
Thomas Jefferson in Washington, D. C., in February 1805. The vineyard continued until 1809, when a killing freeze in May destroyed the crop and many vines. The Dufour family abandoned Kentucky, and migrated west to
Vevay, Indiana, a center of a Swiss-immigrant community. In
California, the first major vineyard and winery was established in 1769 by the
Franciscan missionary
Junípero Serra near
San Diego. Later missionaries carried vines northward;
Sonoma's first vineyard was planted around 1805. The missionaries used the
Mission grape. (In
South America, this grape is known as
criolla or "colonialized European".) Although a
Vitis vinifera variety, it is a grape of "very modest" quality.
Jean-Louis Vignes was one of the early settlers to use a higher quality vinifera in his vineyard near
Los Angeles. German immigrants from the late 1840s had been instrumental in building the wine industry in those states. In the 1860s, vineyards in the
Ohio River Valley were attacked by
black rot. This prompted several wine-makers to move north to the
Finger Lakes region of western New York. During this time, the
Missouri wine industry, centered on the
German colony in
Hermann, was expanding rapidly along both shores of the Missouri River west of
St. Louis. By the end of the century, the state was second to California in wine production. Following the
repeal of Prohibition in 1933, operators tried to revive the American wine-making industry, which was nearly ended. Many talented wine-makers had died, vineyards had been neglected or replanted with
table grapes, and Prohibition had changed Americans' taste in wines. During the
Great Depression, consumers demanded cheap "jug wine" (so-called dago red) and sweet, fortified (high alcohol) wine. Before Prohibition, dry table wines outsold sweet wines by three to one, but afterward, the ratio of demand changed dramatically. As a result, by 1935, 81% of California's production was sweet wines. For decades, wine production was low and limited. Leading the way to new methods of wine production was research conducted at the
University of California, Davis, and at some of the
state universities in New York. Faculty at the universities published reports on which varieties of grapes grew best in which regions, held seminars on wine-making techniques, consulted with grape growers and wine-makers, offered academic degrees in viticulture, and promoted the production of quality wines. In the 1970s and 1980s, success by Californian wine-makers in the northern part of the state helped to secure foreign investment from other wine-making regions, most notably the
Champenois of France. Wine-makers also cultivated vineyards in Oregon and Washington, on Long Island in New York, and numerous other new locales. Americans became more educated about wines, and increased their demand for high-quality wine. All 50 states now have some acreage in vineyard cultivation. By 2004, 668 million
gallons (25.3 million hectoliters) of wine were consumed in the United States. As of 2022, the U.S. produces over 752 million gallons of wine a year, of which California produces 81%, followed by New York, Washington, and Oregon. In the second decade of the 21st century, the US wine industry faces the growing challenges of competition from international exports and managing domestic regulations on interstate sales and shipment of wine. ==Wine regions==