The lush, sun-drenched vineyards of California evoke a romantic, agrarian image of winemaking, though in reality the industry reflects American agribusiness at its most successful. Nonetheless, as author Erica Hannickel shows, this fantasy is deeply rooted in the history of grape cultivation in America. Empire of Vines traces the development of wine culture as grape growing expanded from New York to the Midwest before gaining ascendancy in California—a progression that illustrates viticulture's centrality to the nineteenth-century American projects of national expansion and the formation of a national culture. Empire of Vines details the ways would-be gentleman farmers, ambitious speculators, horticulturalists, and writers of all kinds deployed the animating myths of American wine culture, including the classical myth of Bacchus, the cult of terroir, and the fantasy of pastoral republicanism. Promoted by figures as varied as horticulturalist Andrew Jackson Downing, novelist Charles Chesnutt, railroad baron Leland Stanford, and Cincinnati land speculator Nicholas Longworth (known as the father of American wine), these myths naturalized claims to land for grape cultivation and legitimated national expansion. Vineyards were simultaneously lush and controlled, bearing fruit at once culturally refined and naturally robust, laying claim to both earthy authenticity and social pedigree. The history of wine culture thus reveals nineteenth-century Americans' fascination with the relationship between nature and culture.

The author of A History of Wine in America recounts the beginnings of California’s wine trade in the once isolated pueblo now called Los Angeles. Winner of the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award! With incisive analysis and a touch of dry humor, The City of Vines chronicles winemaking in Los Angeles from its beginnings in the late eighteenth century through its decline in the 1950s. Thomas Pinney returns the megalopolis to the prickly pear-studded lands upon which Mission grapes grew for the production of claret, port, sherry, angelica, and hock. From these rural beginnings Pinney reconstructs the entire course of winemaking in a sweeping narrative, punctuated by accounts of particular enterprises including Anaheim’s foundation as a German winemaking settlement and the undertakings of vintners scrambling for market dominance. Yet Pinney also shows Los Angeles’s wine industry to be beholden to the forces that shaped all California under the flags of Spain, Mexico, and the United States: colonial expansion dependent on labor of indigenous peoples; the Gold Rush population boom; transcontinental railroads; rapid urbanization; and Prohibition. This previously untold story uncovers an era when California wine meant Los Angeles wine, and reveals the lasting ways in which the wine industry shaped the nascent metropolis.

A rich romp through untold American history featuring fabulous characters, The Wild Vine is the tale of a little-known American grape that rocked the fine-wine world of the nineteenth century and is poised to do so again today. Author Todd Kliman sets out on an epic quest to unravel the mystery behind Norton, a grape used to make a Missouri wine that claimed a prestigious gold medal at an international exhibition in Vienna in 1873. At a time when the vineyards of France were being ravaged by phylloxera, this grape seemed to promise a bright future for a truly American brand of wine-making, earthy and wild. And then Norton all but vanished. What happened? The narrative begins more than a hundred years before California wines were thought to have put America on the map as a wine-making nation and weaves together the lives of a fascinating cast of renegades. We encounter the suicidal Dr. Daniel Norton, tinkering in his experimental garden in 1820s Richmond, Virginia. Half on purpose and half by chance, he creates a hybrid grape that can withstand the harsh New World climate and produce good, drinkable wine, thus succeeding where so many others had failed so fantastically before, from the Jamestown colonists to Thomas Jefferson himself. Thanks to an influential Long Island, New York, seed catalog, the grape moves west, where it is picked up in Missouri by German immigrants who craft the historic 1873 bottling. Prohibition sees these vineyards burned to the ground by government order, but bootleggers keep the grape alive in hidden backwoods plots. Generations later, retired Air Force pilot Dennis Horton, who grew up playing in the abandoned wine caves of the very winery that produced the 1873 Norton, brings cuttings of the grape back home to Virginia. Here, dot-com-millionaire-turned-vintner Jenni McCloud, on an improbable journey of her own, becomes Norton’s ultimate champion, deciding, against all odds, to stake her entire reputation on the outsider grape. Brilliant and provocative, The Wild Vine shares with readers a great American secret, resuscitating the Norton grape and its elusive, inky drink and forever changing the way we look at wine, America, and long-cherished notions of identity and reinvention.

With Native Trees, Shrubs, and Vines, acclaimed horticulturalist and bestselling author William Cullina continues his authoritative three-part series on the native species of North America. This user-friendly guide encourages the concept of ecological gardening by working with strictly native flora, and presents a trove of helpful information with lively, easily accessible prose. This encyclopedic guide to temperate North American woody plants covers nearly one thousand native varieties, arranged alphabetically by genus and species. Writing with enjoyable, easy-to-read language and drawing from a deep wellspring of personal experience, Cullina discusses all of the important details you need to select and cultivate each species, including their taxonomic and genetic data, Latin name pronunciations, optimal geographic ranges, soil needs, light and habitat requirements, information about pruning and diseases, and propagation difficulty ratings. It also notes the value of each species for attracting wildlife and highlights the threat of invasive species. Native Trees, Shrubs, and Vines is also beautifully illustrated with over 400 color photographs of each genus, and includes recommendations detailing conditions under which various species thrive. Cullina is also passionate about environmentally-responsible native plant landscaping and gives valuable advice with the larger environment in mind. This book is an indispensable resource for any landscape designer or home gardener's library.

Guide to the selection and planting of more than 1,700 species and varieties of shrubs and plants for American and Canadian gardens.

“Climbing plants are hugely underrated—this book with its lively expression of deep knowledge should encourage everyone to grow more of them.” —Noël Kingsbury Climbing plants constitute a huge, and largely untapped, resource for today’s gardeners. Because their habit of growth is primarily vertical, they can be used for utilitarian as well as ornamental purposes like providing privacy, or screening eyesores. In this comprehensive reference, renowned horticulturist Allan Armitage selects and profiles the most useful and attractive climbing plants for a wide range of sites and conditions, from well-known favourites like clematis, morning glories, and wisteria to more unusual plants like Dutchman’s pipe, passion flowers, and the tropical mandevillas. Each profile includes a general description (enlivened by Armitage’s trademark wry humour) along with the plant’s hardiness, plant family, best method of propagation, method of climbing, and etymology of botanical and common names.“Climbing plants are hugely underrated—this book with its lively expression of deep knowledge should encourage everyone to grow more of them.” —Noël Kingsbury

Winegrower and journalist Richard Figiel offers the first comprehensive history of New York wine, following its turbulent evolution across the state and emerging as a dynamic player in the world of fine wine. He begins by examining New York's distinctive viticultural roots and the geologic forces that shaped the state's terrain for winegrowing. Starting with early efforts to grow grapes for wine in the Hudson Valley, the story moves west to the Finger Lakes and Lake Erie, circles around the state from Long Island to the North Country, and, finally, to contemporary New York City. Through industry booms and busts, he explores the New York wine industry's continuing process of reinvention by resourceful immigrants, family dynasties, giant corporations, and back-to-the-land dreamers. Moving across centuries of winemaking, Figiel unfolds an extraordinary array of grape species, varieties, and wines.