Thomas Jefferson was more than just a founding father of the United States; he was also our country’s first wine connoisseur. Like most Americans, Jefferson enjoyed Madeira and port wine, however that changed after he served as a minister to France from 1784 to 1789. Jefferson came to realize America’s British heritage had created an adulterated liking to fortified wines that were high in alcohol.

It soon became his preference to drink wines from France and Italy that contained a much lower alcohol content but were also more flavorful.

Jefferson’s wife of eleven years, Martha, died in 1782, several months after giving birth to a daughter. In 1784, Jefferson was elected as a minister to France and he moved to Paris. Once there Jefferson enrolled his two daughters, Martha (known as Patsy) and Mary (known as Polly), at the Abbaye de Panthemont, which was a very prestigious Parisian convent school.

While in Paris, Jefferson resided in a villa on the famed Avenue des Champs-Élysées where he became actively involved in French society, entertaining and being entertained, as well as acclimatized his palate to French wines.

While Jefferson didn’t necessarily desire to leave France and return to Monticello, after his daughter Patsy notified her father that she planned to convert to Catholicism and become a nun, Jefferson began arranging for the move back to America. While Jefferson believed that there was a creator god, he also adhered to the belief that after creation there was no further involvement by the creator.

  Upon Jefferson’s return from France, he began drinking mostly French and Italian wines.

Once back in America, Jefferson made a number of unsuccessful attempts to plant vineyards at Monticello using the vitis vinifera species that is common to the famous wine regions of Europe and the Mediterranean. In the late 1700’s, the vitis vinifera species was nearly impossible to grow in North America due to native pests and vine disease. 

In 1794, Jefferson had a wine cellar that consisted of about sixty percent French wines with forty percent being made in the English style so familiar to early colonists. Jefferson was ahead of time when it came to ordering wine. During that time period, merchants would order wine in casks and then bottle the wine once it arrived. Jefferson insisted on buying what was known as estate wine – bottled at the winery before shipping which also cut out the middleman. This not only saved money, but it also insured that the wine maintained a consistent quality.

It was Jefferson’s goal for America to produce wines that were just as fine as those made in Europe and in the same style. It would take almost a century before the vitis vinifera species was being grown in California. Almost two centuries later, rootstock that was resistant to diseases such as phylloxera as well as coldness was able to be grafted to vitis vinfera varieties and grown in the Northeastern U.S.

In May 1976, nearly 200 years after Jefferson helped pen the Declaration of Independence, a blind tasting of some of the best French and American wines was conducted in Paris, France and judged by a panel of nine judges. The tasting consisted of ten bottles each of Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon-based wines. At that point in time, French wines were still generally considered to be the best produced wines in the world. However, two vineyards from Napa Valley, Chateau Montelena and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, walked away from this tasting with the privilege of having either the best Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon at that moment in time. They beat out Bordeaux wines from famed French Chateaus such as Chateau Haut-Brion, Château Mouton-Rothschild, and Château Leoville Las Cases; and Chardonnay based wines from Meursault-Charmes, and Batard-Montrachet.  From the grave, Thomas Jefferson certainly must have raised a glass since his belief that America could produce world class wines had finally come to fruition.