Grapes: American Hybrids

Until the 1850s, grapes of dessert quality remained a luxury for those few who maintained a greenhouse to grow varieties of European origin. At about that time, certain experimenters started to hybridize the few European grapes then known with wildlings selected from the American forests. These hybrids, although still far from perfect in hardiness and productivity, were a revelation that the future of American grape culture lay in seedlings of European and American species combined by hybridization. The first generations of American hybrid grapes were the basis of a wine industry founded on the Ohio River near Cincinnati, and later on Lake Erie and in upstate New York, which survived until national Prohibition.