In the mid-nineteenth century, American wine drinkers found themselves obsessed with a particular grape, known for its fragrant, somewhat musky profile: ‘Catawba’, a spontaneously occurring cross between the wine grape Vitis vinifera traditionally cultivated in Europe and the Vitis labrusca grape indigenous to North America’s eastern seaboard. By the 1850s, this hybrid had achieved vaunted status in the American wine industry. This was also the time when Ohio was the largest wine-producing state in the country, and approximately 19 out of every 20 vines cultivated there were ‘Catawba’ grapes.1 Illustrated catalogs of grapes often did not include this “pionee[r] of American grapes” as it was “too generally known to require portrait or illustration by engraving.”2 Even famed poets wrote odes to the grape; Henry Longfellow waxed that this cultivar “has a taste more divine, / more dulcet, delicious and dream” than any other, so much so that it “has need of no sign, / No tavern-bush to proclaim it” as it was so eminently popular.3

‘Catawba’—which American winemakers often argued distinguished their wine from European classics—was thus the piece de resistance of the early American wine industry. It may seem surprising, then, that this grape fell almost entirely out of favor in the post-Prohibition era, surpassed by classic V. vinifera grapes. Today, few Americans have heard of ‘Catawba’. Those who have may associate it with saccharine pink fortified and unfortified wines and grape juices. Across the United States, many sommeliers who are familiar with ‘Catawba’ decry it as “foxy,” “musky,” or “unidimensional,” and eschew wines made with it.4

Why was a widely popular grape relegated to the realm of the outmoded, even unknown? Through seed catalogues, regional publications, and viticulturists’ correspondence, we can trace the rise and fall of ‘Catawba’ and the Ohio wine industry which is often ignored in contemporary scholarship in favor of the later emergence of the California wine industry. But, as environmental historian Richard White reminds us, “in paths forged and blocked, abandoned and resumed, history shows that things need not be the way they are.”5 Once shunned by the American palate, the ‘Catawba’ has the potential to contribute to the reinvigoration of the American wine industry in the face of the climate crisis.

‘Catawba’, in Hedrick et al., The Grapes of New York (1908). Image courtesy of Harvard Library
Grape Basket Label, Lake Keuka Catawba. Undated (after 1866). Division of Work and Industry, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

Towards a Botanical History of ‘Catawba’

First, though, what exactly is ‘Catawba’? The history of the grape, much like its parentage, is murky. There are many stories regarding how settler winemakers came across the grape in the nascent United States. Some historians (perhaps apocryphally) suggest that one “General Davy” living on the Catawba River brought the cultivar to Washington DC and distributed it among friends in that area, associating the cultivar with the river (which was itself named after the Catawba or Iswa Indigenous people).6 While the veracity of this story is unclear, we know that by 1823, ‘Catawba’ became more widespread, helmed by the “Father of American Viticulture” Major John Adlum who promoted indigenous grape varietals and attempted to create viticultural experiment stations. In an 1829 letter reprinted in the New England Farmer, and Horticultural Register, Adlum reported how he discovered a ‘Catawba’ vine in “Mrs. Schell’s garden,” in Montgomery County, Maryland. While Mrs. Schell apparently had no information as to how the family acquired this vine, she informed Adlum that her husband had referred to it as the Catawba grape.7 Adlum, for his part, sent cuttings of the plant around the country, including to Ohio viticulturist Nicholas Longworth, who, as we will see, played a critical role in popularizing the cultivar.

From its beginnings, viticulturists have argued over the exact botanical definition of ‘Catawba’, with some claiming it was entirely a variety of Vitis labrusca, some contending it was V. labrusca mixed with another indigenous American grape species, and others still arguing that it was a mix between V. labrusca and V. vinifera.8 Today, it seems as if the last hypothesis is correct, as most present-day viticulturists believe ‘Catawba’ is a spontaneously occurring hybrid between labrusca and vinifera that emerged after European settlers brought cuttings of V. vinifera to North America.9 In particular, Catawba is probably a hybrid between V. abrusca grapes and “Semillon,” a white V. vinifera grape commonly grown in the southern winemaking regions of France.10 As with other V. labrusca hybrids, winemakers prized ‘Catawba’ grapes for their versatility and hardiness.11 However, unlike many V. labrusca hybrids, ‘Catawba’ has less of a “foxy” or “musky” flavor, instead often described as a “perfumey” grape.12 The purple-lilac grapes, Adlum declared, were “the most beautiful … to the eye, when they begin to ripen, that I know of.”13

‘Catawba’ and the Ohio Wine Industry

This “most beautiful” grape soon played a critical role in the expansion of the American wine industry and westward expansion more generally. Historians have long outlined the relationship between winemaking and imperialism. Erica Hannickel, in her book Empire of Vines, argues that grape culture in the nineteenth-century United States was distinctly expansionist, not only in terms of artistic and literary representations of the grapevine but also the physical space the vineyard occupied.14 As she argues, “Americans believed if they could make good wine, everything else in terroir’s web”—the “totalizing ecology of the vineyard—” would be legitimated for their new country—including its land, methods, farmers, and claim to international prestige.”15 Here, Hannickel shows, “grapes and the myth of terroir rooted the nation’s imperial sense of itself” during the period of westward expansionism.

One man, Nicholas Longworth, argued in favor of Ohio’s potential as an ideal location for grape-growing. Inspired by both the profit and potential improvements to the nation wrought by viticulture, Longworth began growing grapes as early as 1813 in his backyard.16 By 1823, Longworth was ready to set up a commercial endeavor. In that year, he began to cultivate his first vineyard, a four-acre plot.17 While Longworth began planting South African Cape grapes to make madeira, he soon transitioned to growing Vitis vinifera, which was already popular among American consumers. He went on to dedicate himself to V. vinifera grapes: in one letter to the editors of the Cincinnati Gazette, he writes that he worked for thirty years to cultivate V. vinifera grapes “from all latitudes,” to no success.18

Longworth’s efforts reflect a broader preference for European wine grapes to the exclusion of wild American varieties, which stemmed from a belief in the superiority of V. vinifera. One nineteenth-century grape manual by viticulturist George Engelmann declared the European variety the “only true” wine grape and suggested that native American grapes were not worth cultivating due to their poor quality.19

However, Longworth soon found that Vitis vinifera was not easy to grow in the United States. In thethirty years Longworth attempted to cultivate Europeanwine grapes, he claimed to “have never foundone worthy of cultivation in open air.”20 This experiencewas not unique to Longworth but insteadechoed throughout the nation. As one early Americanbotanist claimed, despite the “hundreds of thousands”of European vines imported, they all faileddue to the North American climate.21 Myriad horticulturalmanuals from the early nineteenth centuryconfirmed that planting Vitis vinifera grapes in theUnited States was a herculean, if not impossible, task.

From its beginnings, viticulturists have argued over the exact botanical definition of ‘Catawba’.

Even after the failure of V. vinifera in eastern North America, Longworth remained deeply committed to growing the wine industry in Ohio. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States hosted several locally bred or discovered indigenous wine grapes, with genetic make-ups including Vitis labrusca, Vitis riparia, Vitis rotundifolia, Vitis aestivalis, and Vitis rupestris.22 Longworth came to believe that these indigenous grapes would form the foundation of the American wine industry. Starting in 1823, Longworth began to focus on cultivating native rather than European grapes. An 1849 letter demonstrates his altered perspective: “We have native grapes of superior quality, both for the table and for wine.… We have neglected our native grapes.”23

Cultivars of indigenous American grapes like V. labrusca were rationalized as both demonstrating the prowess of American agriculture as well as potentially transforming Ohio into the seat of wine production globally. Viticulturist William Prince argued that the existence of native species of grapes demonstrates American superiority in wine cultivation—and perhaps more generally—over Europe. He wrote in one famous treatise on the cultivation of the vine in 1830, “The vineyards of Europe are composed solely of the varieties of a single species of the vine, and that a foreign one transplanted to her soil.”24 By contrast, “in our country, numerous species and varieties are everywhere met with, springing up spontaneously in our woods and prairies, nature’s own gift unaided by culture or by toil.”25 For Prince, this underscores that the United States “possess[es] not only all the advantages that France and other wine countries enjoy, from our having already introduced the choice varieties which those climes can boast, but this advantage is enhanced by the numerous varieties which our own country presents to us.”26

Of the native grapes, Vitis labrusca emerged as the species of choice in Ohio for several reasons. For one, V. labrusca was indigenous to the American Northeast and could withstand dampness and cold—so much so that the grape allegedly failed when planted in the warmth of southern France.27 Further, “the large size of the fruit, the vigor and productiveness of the vine, and its easy propagation from cuttings, made the varieties of this species preferable” to others, according to one 1895 illustrated catalog on the American grapevine.28 These reasons transformed V. labrusca grapes into the grape of choice for early American viticulturists.

As a result of a growing understanding of its qualities, ‘Catawba’ grape became a popular cultivar in the Northeast and Ohio regions. One 1871 article noted the widespread preference for the grape by both “emigrants from the best wine districts of Europe, as well as those of American birth,” based on “careful analytical comparison with the best foreign wines, as well as upon taste, bouquet, &c.”29 ‘Catawba’ was also considered by some viticulturists to have a flavor superior to most indigenous grapes. In one letter to Adlum dated February 12th, 1827, a Dr. George Holcombe lauded the recipient for his role in popularizing ‘Catawba’: “I congratulate you upon the success of your wines, particularly your Catawba, which is incomparably the best—much the best sweet wine I have ever tasted.”30 These reasons led viticulturists to declare that because of ‘Catawba’, America may someday become “the vineyard of the west.”31

Longworth, too, recognized the immense potential of the ‘Catawba’ in the Ohio context after Adlum sent him a sample in 1823. Longworth soon turned his focus to the ‘Catawba’ grape to establish the Cincinnati wine industry as the seat of wine production in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. He wrote of ‘Catawba’, “We have native grapes in most of our states, could a selection be made, which would leave us so little cause to regret that foreign grapes succeed so badly with us.”32 And he began to note the advantages of the native grape over imported varieties, claiming in one profile that, unlike certain European wines, ‘Catawba’ does not “run into the acetous fermentation, or become ropy.”33 The few statistics we have from the 1830s suggest that Longworth’s operation was initially small. In 1833, he owned nine vineyards which produced approximately 3,000 gallons of wine.34 By the 1840s, however, his scale of operations took off as he made a champagne-like “sparkling Catawba” which proved immensely popular throughout the nation and was immortalized in many poems. One Charles Hackay wrote an ode to the grape, ending with “Catawba! Heart warmer! / Soul cheerer! life-zest! / Catawba, the nectar / And balm of the West.” In 1850, Longworth produced 60,000 bottles of Catawba wine; that number rose to 75,000 by 1852.35 These bottles sold very quickly: one 1852 report noted that demand was “much above the ability of Mr. L. to supply.”36 Catawba had rapidly become one of the most popular—and most quintessential—American wines.

Historical Forces of Failure

But even as ‘Catawba’ represented a successful departure from European wine grapes, most producers continued to employ European-style viticultural techniques. The ‘Catawba’ grape was raised in a highly regimented, monocrop culture typical of many European vineyards.37 Longworth also chose to use trellises to support his plants in the typical Rhineland style. Present-day viticulturists suggest a potential reason for this imitation of Rhine viticulture: whereas European vineyards in flat areas do not use trellises as the vines are able to support themselves, the younger vines of the United States could not stand alone, therefore requiring trellises like the grapes growing on the steep hills of the Rhine.38 Another potential reason was that most of Longworth’s vineyards were run by German immigrants, many of whom came from the Rhine.39 Their experience growing grapes in Europe may have led them to adopt similar techniques upon arrival in Cincinnati, even though the topography of Ohio differed from that of their natal lands.

This attempt to transform Cincinnati into the “Rhineland of the West” ultimately failed, in part due to this adherence to traditional European styles of viticulture. Because the ‘Catawba’ grape vines were planted so close to one another and monocropped, they were particularly susceptible to airborne fungal diseases and pests not initially found in Europe. The most destructive of these diseases originally found in America was black rot, which before the 1880s had only been observed in the Eastern United States. Black rot is a fungal disease that appears in the rainy season, as “water activates the release of fungal spores.”40 The spores cause the grapes to shrivel, making them unusable. By 1885, black rot was reported in France, most likely from the transfer of grape vines from the United States to Europe.41 However, this particular fungal disease had not been recorded on the European continent before that time.

Because of the controlled, tight planting of the ‘Catawba’ grape, black rot deeply impacted the Ohio wine industry. According to a 1911 article on the wine industry in Ohio, “From 1850 to 1880 it was difficult to get a bunch of any size and evenly ripened where it escaped the rot.”42 Despite this problem, viticulturists like Longworth continued to praise ‘Catawba’ as the best of America’s native grapes. It is unclear why Longworth remained so loyal to ‘Catawba’; perhaps it was due to the popularity of sparkling ‘Catawba’ nationwide or fealty to the idea of producing wine from a grape native to America. By the 1860s, the tide began to turn against ‘Catawba’. Viticulturist George Husmann, at a meeting of the Missouri Horticultural Society, allegedly tried to place ‘Catawba’ on the “rejected list” of vines, given its liability to various fungal diseases.43 And, just five years later, in 1865, one outlet lamented, “We regret to learn that this variety of grape is nearly destroyed the present season by rot.… Every one having the Catawba in this vicinity, tell us a sad story about them in the present season.”44 Here, then, we see a paradox of the early Ohio wine industry: even as producers like Longfellow opted for indigenous grapes rather than European vinifera, they stuck to traditional European cultivation mechanisms, leading to the industry’s ultimate failure.

Some wine producers recognized that the problems with ‘Catawba’ could be solved by departing from European viticultural methods. One “E.P.C,” writing in a popular Cincinnati newspaper in 1858, argued that the grape was sensitive to diseases only “when not sufficiently aired and ventilated.” The author underlines the failure of traditional planting techniques: “That our old mode of close planting, heading-down, and crowding to the earth, with a view to get branches as near the ground as possible, is not calculated to remove this difficulty, is clear to all and self-evident.”45 Anecdotal evidence suggests that he was correct: an 1888 contributor to a national agricultural journal notes that when he planted ‘Catawba’ with more room than normal, “there has been no rot in twenty-eight years.”46 Such alternatives demonstrate that ‘Catawba’’s proto-industrialized, regimented nature catalyzed the spread of black rot.

Even as producers opted for indigenous grapes, they stuck to traditional European cultivation mechanisms, leading to the industry’s ultimate failure.

However, vineyardists in Ohio, like Longworth, continued to plant ‘Catawba’ in the traditional Rhine style. It is unclear why this happened when national farming magazines and local papers printed information advising against monocropping ‘Catawba’ grapes so close together. Further, it is clear that alternative methods of grape-growing were present in other parts of the United States. Viticulturists in the Hudson Valley, for example, often practiced “mixed-fruit farming” by planting red currants below the grapes and raspberries, strawberries, or a vegetable in between vineyard rows, with fruit trees at the end of every third row.47 The Ohio industry could have drawn upon these alternatives. Instead, perhaps due to attachment to European agricultural traditions, the monocultural cultivation of ‘Catawba’ pushed the Cincinnati wine industry towards its end. By the 1860s, the wine industry in Ohio folded in part due to fungal diseases.48 Its ravages, combined with the lack of laborers in vineyards due to the Civil War, as well as the death of Nicholas Longworth, meant that by 1870, grape-growing almost wholly vanished from Ohio.49 The Ohio wine industry—and the ‘Catawba’ grape that undergirded it—folded after just 50 years. Soon after, the behemoth we know today as the California wine industry took off in Ohio’s stead. Other wine regions, like the Hudson Valley, also came into vogue as the cooler climate limited fungal pressures.50

The Catawba Wine Renaissance?

But even as the Ohio wine industry failed, the ‘Catawba’ grape never totally disappeared, but is used in “Pink Cats” sweet wine as well as Kosher juice and wine.51 And today, Catawba wine is making a comeback. Skeleton Root, a popular Cincinnati winery, is “focused on the revitalization of the local growing region,” and makes delicious and unique Catawba wines that pay homage to Longworth’s legacy. 52 As Skeleton Root winemaker Kate MacDonald noted, “The West Coast is very forward about wine heritage, particularly in Sonoma where they have a lot of pre-prohibition wineries.… I became obsessed once I learned about Cincinnati’s wine heritage.” For MacDonald, using grapes like ‘Catawba’ is an opportunity “to produce a wine that’s uniquely American and uniquely Cincinnati.”53

As MacDonald points out later in the interview, ‘Catawba’ offers more than a fascinating window into American agricultural and environmental history: it also offers a potential path forward in light of climate change. As the climate gets increasingly hotter and more unstable, fungal disease, which thrives on moisture, has the potential to impact grapes even more than normal. “Instead of spraying [fungicides] like five times a year, which we would have done 15 or 20 years ago, we are having to spray 12 or 15 times a year,” explains viticulturist and historian Stephen Casscles.54 “I’m the one spraying these things, [so] I just would rather not use things that are highly toxic,” Casscles says. “Or, if I am, I’d rather use them three times a year rather than twelve.”55

It is ironic that, despite the fact that ‘Catawba’ initially failed due to fungal disease, many winemakers are convinced that when grown in a more spaced out, polycultured manner, the grape can offer a potential antidote to frequent spraying. “The labrusca varieties are marvels of biology” says Phil Plummer, a winemaker at a Montezuma Winery in New York who works with ‘Catawba’ grapes. As he explains, V. labrusca grapes co-evolved with many of the fungal diseases and pests native to North America. “If you can develop a hybrid,” he notes, “there are some of the characteristics and flavor and aroma of a V. vinifera, with some of the hardiness and disease resistance of the wild grapes that grow around here.” This allows Plummer to successfully propagate grapes like ‘Catawba’ without “breaking the bank or being out in the vineyard with the sprayer weekly.”56 This is necessarily an important issue in environmental justice: Justine Belle Lambright, director of external business at the Kalchē Wine Cooperative in Vermont, points out, “Although the majority of workers in a vineyard are Black and brown bodies, they only make up one percent of the ownership level.” Hybrid grapes, which tend to require fewer chemical inputs, thus can improve health conditions for workers of color.57

While many historians have marked the Ohio wine industry as simply a failure, the long history of ‘Catawba’ suggests the vitality of the early American wine industry and a path forward for winemakers today. Hybrid grapes like ‘Catawba’, alongside other hybrids including ‘Croton’, ‘Empire State’, and more, allowed the industry to thrive for many decades. While ‘Catawba’ may have initially failed in the American wine industry, from its failure—as well as its successes—we might find new ways forward in cultivating crops during our current climate crisis.


Julia Fine is a Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford University, where she is pursuing her PhD in environmental history, and a former postgraduate fellow in plant humanities at Dumbarton Oaks.


Endnotes

  1. Erica Hannickel, Empire of Vines: Wine Culture in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 105.
  2. Bush, Son, and Meissner, Illustrated Descriptive Catalogue of American Grape Vines: A Grape Growers’ Manual (St. Louis: R. P. Studley & Co., 1895), 99.
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Catawba Wine,” in Birds of Passage (London: Routledge, 1878), 62.
  4. Phil Plummer, Personal Interview, Phone, April 7, 2022; “Catawba Grape Juice,” Sweetwater Cellars, accessed June 20, 2022, https://sweetwatercellars.com/catawbawhite.html; Julia Fine, “Will Climate Change Help Hybrid Grapes Take Root in the US Wine Industry?,” Civil Eats, June 16, 2022, https://civileats.com/2022/06/16/willclimate-change-help-hybrid-grapes-take-root-in-theus-wine-industry/.
  5. Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), 28.
  6. John Frederic von Daacke, “‘Sparkling Catawba’: Grape Growing and Wine Making in Cincinnati, 1800–1870” (MA Dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 1964), 10
  7. S. Downer, “Native Grapes: Catawba Grape,” The New England Farmer, and Horticultural Register 8, no. 29 (February 5, 1830): 226–27.
  8. J. Stephen Casscles, Grapes of the Hudson Valley: And Other Cool Climate Regions of the United States and Canada (Coxsackie: Flint Mine Press, 2015), 70.
  9. Ibid.
  10. F. Huber et al., “A View into American Grapevine History: Vitis Vinifera Cv. ‘Sémillon’ Is an Ancestor of ‘Catawba’ and ‘Concord,’” VITIS – Journal of Grapevine Research 55, no. 2 (May 11, 2016): 53–56.
  11. Casscles, Grapes of the Hudson Valley, 69.
  12. Ibid., 69–70.
  13. Downer, “Native Grapes,” 227.
  14. Hannickel, Empire of Vines, 8.
  15. Ibid., 12.
  16. Pinney, A History of Wine in America, 157.
  17. Ibid.
  18. Robert Buchanan, The Culture of the Grape, and Wine-Making (Cincinnati: Moore, Anderson & Company, 1854), 106.
  19. George Engelmann, The True Grape-Vines of the United States (St. Louis: R. P. Studley & Co., 1875), 2.
  20. Buchanan, The Culture of the Grape, and Wine-Making, 106.
  21. Engelmann, The True Grape-Vines of the United States, 2.
  22. For more on these indigenous grapes, see: J. Stephen Casscles, Grapes of the Hudson Valley: And Other Cool Climate Regions of the United States and Canada (Coxsackie: Flint Mine Press, 2015).
  23. Buchanan, The Culture of the Grape, and Wine-Making, 106.
  24. William Robert Prince, A Treatise on the Vine: Embracing Its History from the Earliest Ages to the Present Day, with Descriptions of Above Two Hundred Foreign and Eighty American Varieties; Together with a Complete Dissertation on the Establishment, Culture, and Management of Vineyards… (New York: T. & J. Swords, 1830), v.
  25. Ibid.
  26. Ibid.
  27. Paul Lukacs, American Vintage: The Rise of American Wine (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), 126.
  28. Bush, Son, and Meissner, Illustrated Descriptive Catalogue of American Grape Vines: A Grape Growers’ Manual, 27.
  29. W. G, “The Vineyard: The Catawba as a Wine Grape.” Prairie Farmer (Chicago, February 11, 1871), 43.
  30. John Adlum, A Memoir on the Cultivation of the Vine in America: And the Best Mode of Making Wine, 2nd ed. (Washington: Printed for the author, by William Greer, 1828), 150.
  31. H. Shaw, “The Catawba Grape,” Prairie Farmer (Chicago, August 1849), 251.
  32. Annual Report of the Ohio State Board of Agriculture: With an Abstract of the Proceedings of the County Agricultural Societies, to the General Assembly of Ohio … (Columbus: State Printers, 1860), 467.
  33. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents (Washington: Wendell and Van Benthuysen, 1848), 463.
  34. Pinney, A History of Wine in America, 161.
  35. Ibid.
  36. “Grape Culture in the United States.,” Valley Farmer (1849–1864) 4, no. 9 (September 1852): 314.
  37. Hannickel, Empire of Vines, 105.
  38. J. Stephen Casscles, Personal Interview, Phone, December 3, 2021.
  39. Dann Woellert, Cincinnati Wine: An Effervescent History (Mount Pleasant: Arcadia Publishing, 2021).
  40. Casscles, Grapes of the Hudson Valley, 30.
  41. F. Lamson Scribner and Pierre Viala, Black Rot (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1888), 5.
  42. Lowell Roudebush, “The Catawba Grape,” National Stockman and Farmer (Pittsburgh: Center for Research Libraries, 1911), 880–881.
  43. “HORTICULTURAL NOTES: Who Wants Pruning Well Done Father Abraham Apple Iron Hot-Bed Sashes An Inquiry The Catawba Not a First-Rate Grape Ellwanger & Barry’s Catalogue Cherry Solons The Apple Tree Borer,” Michigan Farmer (Lansing, February 25, 1860), 59.
  44. “Catawba Grapes,” Colman’s Rural World (St. Louis: July 1, 1865), 102.
  45. E. P. C, “More About the Grape,” The Cincinnatus (Cincinnati: Center for Research Libraries, September 1, 1858), 412–414.
  46. M. Clay, “Grape-Rot,” National Stockman and Farmer (Pittsburgh: Center for Research Libraries, September 13, 1888), 432–433.
  47. Casscles, Grapes of the Hudson Valley, 10.
  48. von Daacke, “Grape-Growing and Wine-Making in Cincinnati”, 210.
  49. Ibid.
  50. See: Casscles, Grapes of the Hudson Valley.
  51. Phil Plummer, Personal Interview, Phone, April 7, 2022; Dan Berger, “The Feast of Unleavened Bread: Kosher Wine: A Buyer’s Guide,” Los Angeles Times, April 4, 1993.
  52. “Skeleton Root Winery,” The Skeleton Root, urban winery and event space in Over the Rhine, Cincinnati, accessed July 1, 2022, http://www.skeletonroot.com/about.
  53. Karen Day, “Interview: Winemaker Kate MacDonald, Skeleton Root Winery,” Cool Hunting, January 8, 2018, https://coolhunting.com/food-drink/skeleton-root-winery/.
  54. Casscles, Personal Interview, Phone, December 3, 2021.
  55. Julia Fine, “Will Climate Change Help Hybrid Grapes Take Root in the US Wine Industry?,” Civil Eats, June 16, 2022, https://civileats.com/2022/06/16/willclimate-change-help-hybrid-grapes-take-root-in-theus-wine-industry/
  56. See ibid.
  57. Ibid.

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