The Wild Vine: A Forgotten Grape and the Untold Story of American Wine

In this engaging history, food and wine writer Kliman focuses on the Norton, an American grape hybrid, its namesake early 19th-century creator, and its current-day advocate. Going back to the early efforts of American grape growing and winemaking, Kliman assembles a solid biography of the bereaved doctor and amateur horticulturalist whose Jeffersonian devotion to a native American grape and wine eventually led to the birth of a new variety. Despite viticultural progress and recognition, however muted, and his efforts to draw the former president’s interest, Norton died without achieving viticultural success and was lost to history. Kliman’s narrative discloses the hidden story of the Norton’s nurturing over the decades in the Midwest and the role of German-Americans and other immigrants in its survival. Through means and methods like homemade winemaking, the hardy fruit endured blight and Prohibition, and was eventually restored to its native Virginia soil, where the book’s other dominant and most colorful personality, a transsexual, was liberated by her physical change to professionally pursue the grape’s cultivation. (June)