Virginia Becomes Wine Center Thos. Jefferson Envisioned 200 Years Ago

"CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – Gabriele Rausse tends to grape vines that are thriving on the same high slope where Thomas Jefferson tried, and failed, to launch a Virginia wine industry more than 200 years ago.

Rausse is widely hailed as the father of Virginia winemaking, having spent the past 38 years bringing the art and craft of his native Veneto region in northern Italy to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the United States. Now chief gardens and groundskeeper at the 2,500-acre historical site of Monticello, Jefferson's plantation, Rausse thinks often about climate – what it was like during the third president's time, and what it is like as he works the soil today.

He has reached no firm conclusion on how much global warming has contributed to today's viticulture success in the Old Dominion. He has seen vines killed by harsh cold, and likewise has witnessed grape crops fail in unrelenting heat. And Rausse has studied Jefferson's meticulous records of his own extensive agricultural experimentation, revealing that he, too, endured both extremes of Mother Nature."

Marianne Lavelle reports for the Daily Climate December 30, 2014.

SEE ALSO:

"A Man of Wine, 200 Years Ahead of His Time" (Daily Climate)