December 19th - This Date in Wine History

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Wine has a long established history of being our drink of choice for celebrating, entertaining, and savoring life; but it didn't start out that way. From the invention of the barrel to the designation of the separate viticultural areas, wine has a long and sorted history.  In our daily feature "This Date In Wine History," we share an event of critical importance in wine history.

  • The Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery  left England in 1606 with colonists who would found Jamestown, Virginia.  Jamestown was underwritten by the Virginia Company that required settlers to provide for their own needs and hence viticulture came to Virginia.

  • A note from 1834 in the Register of Debates in Congress indicates that American’s imported $200,000 of wine from France in 1824 and increasing to $920,000 in 1833.

  • Albert Abraham Michelson, the first American to win a Nobel Prize in a science was born in 1852.  Born in Poland, he moved to California in 1855.  His childhood home in Murphys Camp is now a tasting room for Hovey Wine.

  • In a letter from 1883, Giuseppe del Puente of 5th Ave., New York praises Dr. Angelo Mariani for his fine wine, Vin Mariani. Vin Mariani was made from Bordeaux wine treated with coca leaves.