Wine & Rattlesnakes

Virginia wine has made a comeback from its bleak beginnings. Cultivation failed to make native grapes competitive with European vintages, and European vines struggled to adapt to the challenges of foreign climates, soils, and pests. Interest in producing good quality wine from native grapes persisted across centuries, and was a preoccupation of Virginia planters, including the Masons, Carters, Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Lees. Stratford founder Thomas Lee experimented with 20 vines of Rhine grape acquired from Pennsylvanian Conrad Weiser, though it is unlikely he succeeded where so many others failed. This month Richard Henry Lee of Chantilly and Stratford ships a cask of Virginia wine to a curious party in London, and indulges his youngest brother’s interest in exotic fauna from back home.

For more on the history of wine in Virginia: read here.

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Transcript

Stratford Mail

V. 

Welcome to Stratford Mail, a Production of Stratford Hall Historic Preserve, where the voices of American history still speak. This episode is made possible by the generous support of Chapter 23 of the Colonial Dames of America. Here now is our Director of Research, Dr. Gordon Blaine Steffey.

This month we’re tracking a cask of Virginia wine from Richard Henry Lee of Chantilly and Stratford to Dr. John Fothergill in London, and a rattlesnake from Richard Henry to his brother Arthur in London.  

The first English settlers to arrive in Virginia were dazzled by its abundance of wild grape, which fed English fantasies about the ‘New World’ as a kind of return to the biblical garden of Eden, where all good things grew in profusion. Jamestown settler George Percy set down this impression on the 12th of May 1607: The soile was good and fruitful … There are also great store of Vines, in bignesse of a mans thigh, running up to the tops of the Trees in great abundance. The fruit of these native vines became the stuff of dreams and anxiety for decades. Already by 1609 Virginia company proxy Robert Johnson predicted: we doubt not but to make there in few years, store of good wines, but incoming colonial governor Lord de la Warr described a sample batch shipped to him in 1610 as sour. He later wrote to the Virginia Company: In every bosk and common hedge, and not far from our pallisado gates, we have thousands of goodly vines running along and leaning to every tree, which yield a plentiful grape in their kind; let me appeal, then, to knowledge, if these natural vines were planted, dressed, and ordered by skilfull vinearoones, whether we might not make a perfect grape and fruitful vintage in short time? This was the golden question, whether (through cultivation) we might not make these native grapes perfect and produce a fruitful vintage in short time, and the answer, in short, was no, but not for lack of effort. Around 150 years later Richard Henry Lee writes to John Fothergil overseas.

Letter

Chantilly in Virginia. May, 1769

Sir,

Your general humanity deserves the esteem of all; but permit me to say, sir, that your particular kindness to Americans claims their reverence and gratitude. When, therefore, my brother, Dr. Lee, informed me that you wished to have some wine from our native grape, I lost no time in procuring the best for you. Captain Johnstoun will deliver you a small cask, together with a few bottles of older wine. The first is of last year’s vintage, and that in bottles is several years old. This wine is, at present, of the true flavour of our grape, and is very gently acid, a quality natural to this fruit. I wish the season, and the heat of the tobacco load, may not injure it. I am, with very singular esteem, sir, your most humble and obedient servant.

Richard Henry Lee.

Dr. John Fothergill was an admired London physician whose 1765 pamphlet, Considerations Relative to the North American Colonies, urged Parliament to repeal the odious Stamp Act and to treat Americans kindly (with equity, at a minimum), views which made the Dr. popular on this side of the Atlantic. Fothergill was an acquaintance and sometime colleague of Arthur Lee, who briefed elder brother Richard Henry on the Dr’s curiosity about Virginia wine. That wine (likely made from muscadine or scuppernong grapes) shipped to England aboard the merchant vessel Lord Camden, captained by John Johnstoun, who was employed by London merchant James Russell. Russell’s wife Ann Lee was first cousin to Richard Henry, and Russell partnered with the Lees of Virginia and Maryland in both commercial and personal ventures. Richard Henry ships the cask with fingers crossed that neither the temperatures belowdecks nor the hogsheads dense with tobacco will harm the wine.       

The cash potential of tobacco dampened colonial interest in the patient discipline of cultivating, growing, and harvesting of grapes for wine production. In 1619 the Virginia Company adopted a policy requiring every householder to yearly plant and maintain ten vines until they have attained to the arts and experience of dressing a vineyard either by their own industry or by the instruction of some vigneron. Eight vignerons or vinedressers were posted to Virginia that very year, among them Frenchmen from Languedoc. By the King’s command the Virginia Company also provided every householder with a 1622 manual for the cultivation of vines and silkworms, authored by the Keeper of Silkworms at Greenwich and Whitehall, John Bonoeil, who ironically had no direct experience of viticulture in America, viticulture being the science of cultivating grapevines and grape. But, in any case, directives and incentives to viticulture were no match for the rewards of the booming tobacco trade. 

And, to be honest, the wine that was produced wasn’t very good, at all. European vines did not thrive, and wine produced from native grapes was sour, acidic, and otherwise unpalatable. Even the company concluded that Virginia wine “has been rather of scandal than credit to us.” Failure to establish a wine industry only compounded the misery of the Company, which was already under immense and ultimately fatal pressure due to a longstanding record of financial loss and the Powhatan Uprising of 1622. Later laws and incentives designed to incite a Virginia wine revolution could not negotiate the several hurdles. Who was to blame? The Frecnh, some claimed, pointing fingers at the French vignerons, but in reality 17th century growers (and many 18th) failed to account for Virginia’s subtropical climate, the sandy soil of the Atlantic coastal plain, fungal diseases like powdery mildew and black rot, and vineyard pests like hoppers and moths.    

More than wine was on the mind of Richard Henry Lee in May 1769. On the 16th of the month, the Virginia House of Burgesses (which included Richard Henry) passed in secret session a series of resolutions challenging the right of Parliament to impose tax and to extradite unruly colonials to Britain for trial. The very next day Lord Botetourt dissolved the House, which immediately convened at nearby Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg and formed an association to boycott certain British and European goods, among which was wine, but the association fell apart when Britain repealed the Townshend duties in 1770–with the exception of the duty on tea, and we know where that leads. Two days later, Richard Henry updated brother Arthur on those events in the capital, on the status of Fothergill’s wine, and on the prospect of securing some unusual cargo.    

Williamsburg. 19th May 1769.

… I have been so covered with affliction this past winter, that I have thought but little of any thing except my own unhappiness, and am therefore unprovided with birds: but I will take proper care the next season: Mr. Cox has promised to ship a small cask of his best Virginia wine to Dr. Fothergill in Capt. Johnstown, and I expect you will get a Rattle Snake by the same opportunity. Continue my dear brother to love me, and to believe that I am and ever shall be your most affectionate brother.  

We can surmise that the “best Virginia wine” isn’t a product of cellars at Chantilly or Stratford,  and thus the expedient of a cask from Mr. Cox. Apart from the brotherly love on show here, the letter strays into birds and rattlesnakes. Not for the first time Richard Henry ships colonial fauna across the pond to Arthur. Two years earlier in 1767, Arthur replied to such a shipment:   

… I am much obliged to you for your present, duck and brandy. She appears very disconsolate without a mate. The Partridges were by mismanagement let loose at sea, and perished in the ocean.

Georgian London thrummed with the trade in and display of exotic animals. Such animals were symbols of empire, of the capability to master and bring the distant and dangerous there here. Collections and exhibitions of curiosities (including exotic animals) were integral to 18th century coffeehouse and consumer culture, and rattlesnakes (whether quick or dead) featured in these exhibits as early as the 1730s. They were a popular choice for proprietors and collectors because their metabolism gave them an edge over most other animals during transport from British North America and because patrons and spectators could experience fear of this noisy, lethal reptile and take delight in that fear due to the controlled environment. Ducks, partridges, other birds, and rattlesnakes–Arthur Lee was collecting live specimens of North American fauna, perhaps to suit his own naturalist aims, or perhaps he played the part of procurer for his elite friends like Lord Shelburne, who kept an orangutan and a tamed leopard in his orangery at Bowood House in Wiltshire, where Arthur sometimes visited. Exotic animal traffic was an expression of empire, yes, and a business, a popular vehicle of edutainment, a way to boost your social capital, and a tributary feeding the work of natural historians, anatomists, dissectors, and other agents of Enlightenment science. 

Chantilly in Virginia April 5, 1770

 … You have never informed me, if the wine was received by Do<ctor> Fothergill, or how the old gentleman liked it. The storm in Sep<t> last, by distroying the grapes, prevented any wine from being made in these parts [this is a reference to the Great Chesapeake Bay hurricane of September 1769, which caused considerable damage at Stratford and Chantilly]. I have been constantly on the look out for a rattle snake and am now promised by a gentleman above that he will exert himself to get one against Capt. Grieg’s ship sails, or Walker’s at furthest. Let me know if you please whether it will be agreeable to Lord Shelburne, that I send him a cask of our finest spirit made from the peach. It is so highly flavorous, and partakes so much of the fruit, that I really think ’tis much preferable to the finest Arrack - I am my dear brothers most affectionate faithful friend.

We know neither whether Fothergill received his wine, nor Arthur his rattlesnake, though it's safe to assume the industrious RH satisfied both requests. Two years before this final reference to Fothergill’s cask, Virginia exported 13 tons and 135 gallons of wine to Britain. The very year Fothergill gets his cask (if indeed he got it), a Frenchman named Andre Estave pitches the Virginia House of Burgesses for support to produce what he called “good merchantable wine” from native grapes on land near Williamsburg. Estave’s experiment had failed by 1777, when the Vineyard (as he called it) was put up for sale, and Virginia colony got out of the wine business. Moderate advances in Virginia winemaking in the 19th century were interrupted and diminished by competition from California, Prohibition, and American entry into WWII. 

Did Dr. Fothergill enjoy his cask of Virginia wine? Drinkable Virginia wine was a long time coming, and desirable Virginia wine, well, wine from the native grape of our Commonwealth splits opinion today even as it enjoys a boom built around wines made from French-American hybrids. Fothergill would have done better to receive a cask of flavorous peach brandy as Richard Henry proposes to ship to Lord Shelburne because unlike European vines, the fruit trees introduced to North America by European settlers flourished.   

But that’s a story for another day.

Thank you for listening and subscribing to Stratford Mail, from Stratford Hall Historic Preserve in Westmoreland County, Virginia, I’m Director of Research Dr. Gordon Blaine Steffey

Do more than just listen–become an active participant with Stratford Hall in the production of new and exciting programs like Stratford Mail. Contribute online at  https://www.stratfordhall.org/support-stratford/   

For more on the history of wine, read the excellent A History of Wine in America: From the Beginnings To Prohibition, by Thomas Pinney (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)

Sound effects courtesy of Pixabay
Music is William Ross Chernoff's "In Shadows"
AI voices courtesy of Play.ht and Murf.ai (except Dr. Steffey)

© Dr. Gordon Blaine Steffey, 2023