Abstract
Beatrice Fink : Thomas Jefferson : Statesman, winegrower, lover of wines. Jefferson is America's first, and arguably greatest, patron of wine and winegrowing. This article, after a brief survey of earlier winegrowing in America, traces the hows, whens and whys of the third American President's involvement in the world of wine, thereby enhancing the "Sage of Monticello" behind the Founding Father. Apart from a love of the land and its cultivation, reinforced by a fascination with the natural sciences, Jefferson's commitment to his vineyards and the universe of wine represents a conflation (which is not without its inconsistencies) of a visionary physiocratic dream energized by patriotic zeal, a pragmatic clinical attitude towards the tangible realities of soil, weather, economics, etc., and the subtle tastes of wine. A three-stage itinerary — initiation, assimilation (comprising the crucial 1784-89 stay in France) and consolidation — is fired throughout by his belief in wine drinking as a means of controlling alcoholism in which wine replaced "ardent spirits". Jefferson's dream was not to materialize during his lifetime, but he himself foresaw a rosier future.
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