Ky Wine

Believe it or not, America’s commercial wine industry was born in Kentucky in 1798 when Swiss vine-dresser, Jean-Jacques (John James) Dufour, set out into the new nation on a quest to find suitable land for growing grapes and producing wine. Sent by his father at the urging of Benjamin Franklin, Dufour eventually arrived in Lexington where he made the acquaintance of prominent statesman Henry Clay. Backed with money from several respected local citizens, including Clay, Dufour formed the Kentucky Vineyard Society and bought 600 acres of land on the sloping banks of the Kentucky River in what’s now Jessamine County. Dufour established the aptly named “First Vineyard” and in 1805 two five-gallon casks of wine – a red made from the Alexander grape and a white made from the Madeira grape – were taken by horseback to President Thomas Jefferson in Washington, D.C. In a letter to a friend, Jefferson wrote, “The quality…satisfies me that we have at length found one native grape … which will give us a wine worthy of the best vineyards of France.”

After overcoming crop damage from the Civil War as well as vine diseases, Kentucky became the nation's third-largest grape and wine producer by the late 1800s. During the 1870s, Bracken County in Northern Kentucky was the leading wine-producing county in the U.S., producing over 30,000 gallons annually (half of the total national wine production at the time). However, Prohibition put a halt to Kentucky’s grape and wine industry, and many Kentucky farmers turned their acreage over to tobacco production.

Kentucky passed legislation in 1976 allowing wineries to operate, and tobacco settlement funds provided a number of Kentucky farmers the opportunity to once again explore grapes as a cash crop. The Commonwealth’s modern grape and wine industry has seen tremendous growth. Since 2000, the number of Kentucky wineries has matured from less than 10 to more than 70 and continues to grow.