Chasing Cynthiana: My Search for America’s Native Wines

Why do Americans go to the grocery store to buy wine from California, Italy, or New Zealand, when many of us can find an independent winery thirty minutes down the road? Why are locally grown and produced wines so often disdained when locally grown food is upheld as the gold standard? The U.S. wine industry has lagged behind Europe’s for far too long for reasons that have little to do with taste or quality, and Prohibition’s disruption of domestic wine production provides only part of the explanation.

In Chasing Cynthiana Lynn Hamilton reveals that Americans have far more wine options than they realize. One of those options, made from Norton grapes, has a rich but mostly forgotten history, entwined with the pioneering of America’s western states. But Norton (also known as Cynthiana) is often pushed aside to make way for wine varietals from France and Italy.

Is the wine drinker’s preference for certain grapes rooted in necessity or tradition? How will climate change alter America’s traditional wine regions? Hamilton considers these and other questions as she journeys through some of America’s hidden pockets of wine in this exploration of winemaking’s history in the United States. Infused with humor and whimsy, Chasing Cynthiana challenges the wine industry’s snobbery as well as its complacency when it comes to American vintages.

Lynn Hamilton is an independent scholar and the former editor in chief of two Georgia community newspapers, Creative Loafing and the Tybee News. She blogs on animal advocacy and environmental policy and is the author of several books, including Florence Nightingale: A Life Inspired; Florence Nightingale’s Sister; and Gandhi: A Life Inspired.