The US viticulture pioneer John Adlum (1759-1836) is considered "the father of American viticulture". After a military career in the War of Independence, he became a surveyor and moved with his family to the Federal District of Washington, DC in 1814. Two years later, he bought land in what is now the Northwest residential district of Cleveland Park and began to take up viticulture. He first tried to grow vines from Europe, but these succumbed to diseases such as mildew and phylloxera. Around 1820, he received the historic Catawba variety, which he later named, from a Scholl family in the US state of Maryland. The vine had already arrived there from North Carolina a few years earlier. The Scholl family claimed that the variety was a Tokay vine from Hungary. Adlum planted it on 200 acres at his vineyard, The Vineyard. He later determined that it could not be a Tokay vine at all.
In 1823, Adlum sent a wine made from it to the then 80-year-old former US President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), who had acquired extensive wine knowledge as US Ambassador to France for several years and was himself a winegrower in Virginia with his vineyard Monticello. Jefferson spoke very highly of the wine and compared it to a Burgundian Chambertin. However, he advised Adlum to stick to native varieties, "as European vines would take centuries to adapt to the American climate and pests". The lawyer and US wine pioneer Nicholas Longworth (1783-1863) then received Catawba cuttings from John Adlum in 1825, grew them on a large scale on his estates near Cincinnati on the Ohio River and pressed a sparkling wine from them.
Picture right: Ursula Brühl, Doris Schneider, Julius Kühn-Institut (JKI)
