Chasing Cynthiana: My Search for America’s Native Wines

Journalist Hamilton (Florence Nightingale) focuses this tedious history of American winemaking on one of the country’s lesser-known native grapes. She begins in 1820s Virginia, where physician Daniel Norton grafted delicate European vines onto hardier American roots to create the Cynthiana, a grape that could grow in the “hostile” climate of the eastern U.S. and made for the area’s first “truly fine red wine.” From there, Hamilton tracks the varietal’s spread to winemaking hubs like Hermann in mid-19th-century Missouri, before it disappeared from vineyards in the 1920s and ’30s as Prohibition strangled the still-emerging American wine industry. When Prohibition ended, California became the country’s dominant wine producer, and the rest of the American wine industry, including regions where the Cynthiana had been popularized, never fully recovered (though the author—who encourages readers to buy local wines to help cut down on waste from imports shipped over long distances—highlights the revival of cherry wine in Michigan, mead in New Hampshire, and Cynthiana wine in Georgia). Unfortunately, the author’s admirable goal of decentering California from the history of American wine is weakened by a surfeit of dull detail, including distracting tangents on the personal lives of key figures in American winemaking (such as Norton’s multiple marriages and possible undiagnosed depression). Only the most obsessive wine buffs need apply. (Nov.)