Wine is not a new-comer to Ohio. The Ohio wine industry got its start in the early 1800s when Nicholas Longworth, a Cincinnati lawyer who had an avid interest in wine, wanted to make his own European-style table wine. He experimented with a few vinifera grapes, but the vines didn't hold up to Ohio's relatively cold winters. His Catawba still wine, made from a native grape variety grown along the Ohio River, was mildly successful among the city's German population, but it was his sparkling pink Catawba, made in the traditional French champagne method, that really put him on the map.

There grows no vine
By the haunted Rhine
By Danube or Guadalquivir,
Nor on island or cape
That bears such a grape
As grows by the Beautiful River.

So waxed Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his “Ode to Catawba Wine” about the wines made on the banks of the Ohio River. (Guadalquivir, for the benefit of wine trivia fanatics, is a river in southern Spain that flows into the Atlantic Ocean along the border of the sherry-producing region of Jerez.) Longworth's Ohio wine drew praise from as far away as London.

Perking up their ears to the sound of media acclaim, other Ohio winemakers followed suit, and by 1859 Ohio was the country's top producer of wine. Soon after, however, rot and disease killed Ohio's vines and the workforce abandoned the vineyards to fight in the Civil War. By the end of the war, the wine industry in southern Ohio was quite dead.

Winemaking then shifted north, especially to the Lake Erie Islands, where German immigrants brought their winemaking skills to an area where they found a climate not so different from their native land. By the late 1800s, there were dozens of wineries on the islands making wine from – you guessed it – Catawba, as well as other native grapes.

Prohibition nearly killed the country's wine industry altogether, though some wineries survived by producing grape juice carefully labeled with the instructions, “Do not add sugar or store in a warm place as contents will ferment.”
A few surviving winemakers struggled on until the next big industry innovation in the 1960s: the planting of French-American hybrid grapes hardy enough to survive harsher winters. With the dawning of new grapes came wines closer in taste to European table wines. Wines such as Seyval Blanc, Vidal Blanc and Maréchal Foch began to appeal to the public taste.

Over the years since, slowly at first but now with increasing impetus, true European varietals have been introduced and successfully grown in most of the winemaking regions in Ohio, including the Ohio River Valley and along Lake Erie. Today there are over 60 Ohio wineries that produce wines ranging from your grandmother's favorite Concord to award-winning Chardonnay, Riesling and Pinot Noir. Dozens of them are within a couple of hours of the Cleveland/Akron area. So appoint your designated driver, hop in the car and start exploring.

For a complete list of all Ohio wineries visit www.ohiowines.org or call (800) 227-6972.

Selection reprinted with permission. The complete article first appeared in TheWineBuzz, Northeast Ohio's only magazine devoted to wine and the lifestyle that goes with it. It is available free at over 200 locations. Visit www.thewinebuzz.com to learn more.

Donna Marchetti is Editor-in-Chief of TheWineBuzz magazine, a Northeast Ohio-based publication that covers wine from around the world. As a freelancer she has written about travel, food and wine for newspapers and magazines including the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times. She has traveled extensively in wine-producing regions of Europe and the United States.

Photos by Bob Perkoski, www.Perkoski.com.