American Wine

In America, the history of drinking wine is loaded with stops, starts and irregularities. The activities of historic prohibitionist have created a distorted line between detrimental alcoholism and moderate wine consumption.

During the 17 th century, Spanish missionaries produced the first New World wine. Sometime later, grapes were being cultivated by French settlers and they started preparing juice and wine from grapes. Consumption of wine was found to be dominant in Catholics, people of southern or central European origin and immigrants from Italy, Germany, and France. These wine drinkers were balanced by settlers from northern Europe who prohibited or discouraged consumption of alcohol.

Even though not correct, alcoholism seemed to be a problem only to certain racial groups that enjoyed drinking wine. The major problem of inebriation was due to consumption of beer and whiskey.