Ohio Wine Country: A Short Guide

In the 1850s, the largest wine-producing state in the country was not California. It was Ohio, and the wine that made its name was a sparkling Catawba from vineyards above the Ohio River at Cincinnati.

From the Ohio River to Lake Erie

The man behind it was Nicholas Longworth, a Cincinnati lawyer who had grown rich investing in land and took up grape growing as a passion. He planted his first commercial vineyard, four acres, in 1823. European vines failed for him, so he turned to American grapes, and by the mid-1820s he had settled on Catawba, a grape most viticulturists now believe is a chance cross between a native American vine and a European one.

By the 1840s Longworth was making a champagne-style sparkling Catawba, and demand took off. His output reached 75,000 bottles by 1852. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem in the wine's praise, declaring that "Catawba wine / Has a taste more divine, / More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy." In the 1850s Ohio led the nation in wine, and roughly 19 of every 20 vines in the state were Catawba.

The boom did not last. Black rot, a fungal disease that spreads in wet weather, tore through the closely planted Catawba vineyards. The Civil War drew laborers away, and Longworth's death cost the trade its great champion. By the end of the 1860s, the Cincinnati wine industry had largely folded.

Grape growing found a steadier home in the north, along the Lake Erie shore and on the islands, where the lake tempers the weather. In 1901, a bulletin from the state's agricultural experiment station described a belt of commercial table-grape vineyards skirting Lake Erie from the Pennsylvania border to Port Clinton, along with a wine industry in the island district.

Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933, all but erased that trade. Many growers switched to grapes for juice and jelly or turned to other crops altogether.

The revival came slowly. In the 1970s, grape research at Ohio State and growers willing to try winter-hardy Riesling helped restart the industry, and a small group of winemakers organized what became the Ohio Wine Producers Association.

In 1981 the state created the Ohio Grape Industries Committee, funded by a share of the wine tax, to support research and promotion. That year Ohio had 35 licensed wineries. Today it has more than 400.

Five appellations

An American Viticultural Area, or AVA, is a grape-growing region with a federally defined boundary, recognized by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) for features that set it apart. Five AVAs include Ohio ground, and three of them lie entirely within the state:

• Isle St. George (1982) covers all of North Bass Island in Lake Erie, part of Ottawa County. It is wholly in Ohio and the oldest of the five.
• Loramie Creek (1982) lies entirely within Shelby County, in west-central Ohio.
• Grand River Valley (1983) sits in Lake, Geauga and Ashtabula counties in Northeast Ohio, inside the larger Lake Erie AVA. It, too, is wholly in Ohio.
• Lake Erie (1983) follows the shore and islands of Lake Erie across Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.
• Ohio River Valley (1983) reaches along the Ohio River through parts of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia.

Grapes, the lake and where to start

Ohio's growers work with three families of grapes. American varieties, the native and near-native grapes, include Concord, Niagara, Delaware, Norton and Catawba itself. Hybrids, bred from American and European vines, include Vidal, Chambourcin, Traminette and Vignoles. The European vinifera grapes of the classic wine regions include Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc. All appear on Ohio State University's list of recommended wine grapes for the state.

Winter is the hard part. Ohio State's specialists call winter injury the major challenge in growing grapes, and they describe hybrids as typically hardier and more disease resistant than vinifera. The state's warmest sites, along the Lake Erie shore and in the Ohio River Valley, have had the most success with vinifera. Inland, where winters run colder, those grapes are a risk outside the very best sites.

Along the shore, the lake does much of the work. In late winter and early spring, the cold lake holds back the warm spells that can coax buds open too early, only for a freeze to follow. In fall, the lake's stored warmth delays the first freeze by a month or more compared with ground farther inland.

When federal regulators recognized the Grand River Valley in 1983, they described a growing season of 170 to 185 days near the lake, depending on the distance from shore, and noted that the lake's moderating influence reaches only a short distance inland.

The best way to understand Ohio wine is to taste across those three families: a native grape such as Catawba or Concord, a hybrid such as Vidal or Chambourcin, a vinifera such as Riesling or Cabernet Franc. Each shows a different side of the state.

The Ohio Wine Producers Association's site, ohiowines.org, is a good place to plan from. It lays out seven regional wine trails, from Shores & Islands along Lake Erie to the Ohio River Valley in the south. Pick one, go at harvest or on a quiet spring weekend, and let the winemakers tell you what grows well where they are. A state that once led the nation in wine has a good deal to show for its second act.